Cremation

[16] A model of Brunetti's cremating apparatus, together with the resulting ashes, was exhibited at the Vienna Exposition in 1873 and attracted great attention[17] Meanwhile, Sir Charles William Siemens had developed his regenerative furnace in the 1850s.

Through this method, an open-hearth furnace can reach temperatures high enough to melt steel, and this process made cremation an efficient and practical proposal.

The efficient and cheap process brought about the quick and complete incineration of the body and was a fundamental technical breakthrough that finally made industrial cremation a practical possibility.

[17] His main reason for supporting cremation was that "it was becoming a necessary sanitary precaution against the propagation of disease among a population daily growing larger in relation to the area it occupied".

In addition, he believed, cremation would prevent premature burial, reduce the expense of funerals, spare mourners the necessity of standing exposed to the weather during interment, and urns would be safe from vandalism.

In Anglican and Nordic Protestant countries, cremation gained acceptance (though it did not yet become the norm) first by the upper classes and cultural circles, and then by the rest of the population.

[28] The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia was critical of the development, referring to them as a "sinister movement" and associating them with Freemasonry, although it said that "there is nothing directly opposed to any dogma of the Church in the practice of cremation.

During World War II (1939–45), Nazi Germany used specially built furnaces in at least six extermination camps throughout occupied Poland including at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Belzec, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka, where the bodies of those murdered by gassing were disposed of using incineration.

The efficiency of industrialised killing of Operation Reinhard during the most deadly phase of the Holocaust produced too many corpses, therefore the crematoria manufactured to SS specifications were put into use in all of them to handle the disposals around the clock, day and night.

[34]The Holocaust furnaces were supplied by a number of manufacturers, with the best known and most common being Topf and Sons as well as Kori Company of Berlin,[35] whose ovens were elongated to accommodate two bodies, slid inside from the back side.

When cremation is finished, the remains are passed through a magnetic field to remove any metal, which will be interred elsewhere in the crematorium grounds or, increasingly, recycled.

[51] The ashes are entered into a cremulator[52] to further grind the remains down into a finer texture before being given to relatives or loved ones or scattered in the crematorium grounds where facilities exist.

During the cremation process, the greater portion of the body (especially the organs and other soft tissues) is vaporized and oxidized by the intense heat; gases released are discharged through the exhaust system.

This leaves the bone with a fine sand like texture and color, able to be scattered without need for mixing with any foreign matter,[57] though the size of the grain varies depending on the Cremulator used.

There may be melted metal lumps from missed jewellery; casket furniture; dental fillings; and surgical implants, such as hip replacements.

Large items such as titanium hip replacements (which tarnish but do not melt) or casket hinges are usually removed before processing, as they may damage the processor.

The thought of a long and slow decomposition process is unappealing to some;[68] many people find that they prefer cremation because it disposes of the body relatively quickly.

These people view a traditional ground burial as an unneeded complication of their funeral process, and thus choose cremation to make their services as simple as possible.

Thus, the roughly 1 million bodies that are cremated annually in the United States produce about 240,000 t (270,000 short tons) of carbon dioxide, which is more CO2 pollution than 22,000 average American homes generate in a year.

[73] In some countries such as the United Kingdom, the law now requires that cremators be fitted with abatement equipment (filters) that remove serious pollutants such as mercury.

[80][81] In Christian countries and cultures, cremation has historically been discouraged and viewed as a desecration of God's image, and as interference with the resurrection of the dead taught in Scripture.

The early church carried on Judaism's respect for the human body as being created in God's image, and followed their practices of speedy interment, in hopes of the future resurrection of all dead.

Beginning in the Middle Ages, and even more so in the 18th century and later, non-Christian rationalists and classicists began to advocate cremation again as a statement denying the resurrection and/or the afterlife,[89] although the pro-cremation movement often took care to address these concerns.

Practices that show insufficient respect for the ashes of the dead such as turning them into jewelry or scattering them are forbidden for Catholics, but burial on land or sea or enclosing in a niche or columbarium is now acceptable.

"[96] Indeed, in the 1870s, the Anglican Bishop of London stated that the practice of cremation would "undermine the faith of mankind in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, hasten rejection of a Scriptural worldview and so bring about a most disastrous social revolution.

[99] The first crematoria in the Protestant countries were built in the 1870s, and in 1908, the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey—one of the most famous Anglican churches—required that remains be cremated for burial in the abbey's precincts.

[106] But when a cremation is specifically and willfully chosen for no good cause by the one who is deceased, he or she is not permitted a funeral in the church and may also be permanently excluded from burial in a Christian cemetery and liturgical prayers for the departed.

[112][114][115] The roots of this belief are found in the Vedas, for example in the hymns of Rigveda in section 10.16, as follows: Burn him not up, nor quite consume him, Agni: let not his body or his skin be scattered, O all possessing Fire, when thou hast matured him, then send him on his way unto the Fathers.

Balinese Hindu dead are generally buried inside the container for a period of time, which may exceed one month or more, so that the cremation ceremony (Ngaben) can occur on an auspicious day in the Balinese-Javanese Calendar system ("Saka").

This halakhic concern is grounded in the literal interpretation of Scripture, viewing the body as created in the image of God and upholding a bodily resurrection as core beliefs of traditional Judaism.