Research Paper On Embalming

Embalming- a practice so common in North America that it is simultaneous to blasphemy to decline it for your loved ones. Things may be starting to change as the truth of embalming is starting to come out, with people beginning to identify it alongside torture and its performers- the funeral workers- as the torturers. However, the funeral workers are also subjected to harm from this practice as the embalming fluid contains more than 40 different chemicals that have been federally categorized as dangerous (12). One of the most common and perhaps, most dangerous, is formaldehyde- the main ingredient in the embalming recipe- which is a harmful carcinogen, causes leukemia, and can even lead to ALS. It was in 1981 that the NTP (National Toxicology Program) first listed formaldehyde as ‘reasonably anticipated to be a human carcinogen’ and in 2011, was upgraded to being a ‘known carcinogen’ (1). This classification is due to the “sufficient evidence of carcinogenicity from studies in humans that indicate a causal relationship between the exposure to the substance and human cancer” (1). The details itself may appear as rather off-putting to an onlooker due to the fact that inside the numerous studies, there appears to be many contradictory conclusions. Some state that formaldehyde can lead to nasopharyngeal cancer, in people that work in the
alming business, at a relative risk estimate of 2.2 (that is, they are 2.2 times more likely to get nasopharyngeal cancer), which is not statistically significant to some researchers, but it is still considerably