I was reading an online news story regarding the mass graves being created after the Boxing Day tsunami disaster in Asia. I was a bit astounded when I came across the following claim from Dana Van Alphan of the Pan American Health Organization: “there [is] no danger of corpses contaminating water or soil because bacteria and viruses cannot survive in dead bodies.” (The story I read is here: http://katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=73758, but similar quotes can be found in many stories about the tsunami.) I checked into this organization online, and in an article titled “Fears of Dead Bodies Are Unfounded” (http://www.paho.org/English/DD/PIN/pr041229.htm), they do indeed state that “contrary to popular belief, dead bodies do not lead to catastrophic outbreaks of diseases” and thus in cases of mass death, like the tsunami, bodies shouldn’t be thrown into mass graves depriving survivors of the chance to identify, or at least say goodbye to, the dead. According to what I’ve read online, our fear of dead bodies apparently comes from fear of diseases carried by plague victims, but this doesn’t apply to people not carrying diseases, like the people who died in the tsunami. Survivors carry disease much more than the dead, and efforts should go toward providing clean water and food rather than burying the dead.
So, is this true? Is it really all a myth that dead bodies create disease? I’ve always assumed that corpses are not things you want to have hanging around, or this it just because of the stench and general bad look? Thanks in advance for any help in confirming this and explaining the science behind it.
Well, for starters it’s bacteria that results in the bloating and stench of rotting bodies, so right there I’ve got a quibble with Dana Van Alphan. Such bacteria and their toxins could leach into the local water supply, and that could cause disease.
Beyond that - rotting bodies will attract rats, mice, cockroaches, and other carrion eaters which, themselves, can spread disease.
And I have to question just how “comforting” it would be to view a body that’s been rotting in tropical heat and wet for a week. Do these people making these statements seriously expect tens of thousands of homeles people to camp out next to thousands of rotting bodies for an extended period? Clean food and water are important, yes - so it being able to breathe without gagging.
If you ask me, it’s up to the people actually living with the problem - if they want the corpses buried, they get buried. Pretty arrogant for those halfway around the world who aren’t actually living with the problem to criticize.
Plus you wouldn’t want some mad scientist or practioner of the Black Arts to come by and turn them all into Zombies! :eek: Better to put them in the ground quickly.
This is true, and the key sentence is this one: According to what I’ve read online, our fear of dead bodies apparently comes from fear of diseases carried by plague victims, but this doesn’t apply to people not carrying diseases, like the people who died in the tsunami.
When you think about how diseases get spread, it’s usually by coming in contact with infected bodily fluids: saliva, snot, semen, etc. You’d have a hard time catching a respiratory ailment, for example, from someone who can’t sneeze or drool on you anymore. Also, dead bodies don’t create very conditions for bacteria and viruses to multiply - most microorganisms that cause illness can only survive at a very defined temperature range (37 degrees C, minus a degree or two), and bodies cool off within a few days of death - not by very much, but enough that most of the dangerous microorganisms wouldn’t survive.
I can understand worries about fecal matter from dead bodies infecting groundwater, but someone killed in an accident who was otherwise healthy would have the same fecal microflora that everyone else in their community has, and so the survivors would already have resistance to any dangerous microorganisms the dead person was carrying. People coming in from the outside, however, would have to take extra care not to come in contact with fecal matter - but then they’d also have to worry about boiling water and taking necessary precautions anyway.
Unless you’re in the tropics and the temperatures are at or above 37 C - what has the temperature been over the past week in, say, Phuket or Tamil or the Maldives? Decay also generates some heat - in a warm climate a dead body might retain enough heat to remain infectious longer than it would in, say, Ohio.
That presumes that
all of the people killed were healthy, and
they were all locals, and
the immunity of the survivors would remain at normal levels.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume most folks were healthy. In Phuket and Phi-Phi, as well as other locations, they were NOT all locals, meaning there is a now a lot of foreign intestinal flora in the environment, which means the incidence of Traveler’s Tummy is going to go up, if nothing else. Indonesians may have immunity to their own local microbes, but that doesn’t mean they’re immune to those carried into the area by, say, Swedes on vacation. Clean drinking water is in short supply - not just from dead bodies floating in water sources but also because surface waters are contaminated with sea water after a tsunami, leaving them brackish at best. Stress, injury, lack of clean fresh water, and lack of food is going to wear down the immunity of survivors, leaving them more vulnerable to local illnesses, much less those brought in by visitors.
So yes, the threat of disease from dead bodies may be somewhat exaggerated, but it’s not absent. There is also a psychological/cultural component at work here. Many of these areas are Muslim, which religion advocates rapid burial, or from cultures which advocate rapid disposal of the dead. Right now is not the time to go in and tell these folks “hey, dead bodies aren’t as bad as you think they are”. I’d say the distress of several million people having to live in the stink and rot of decaying bodies outweighs the distress of a few thousand relatives living on other continents - which seems to me to be where the biggest hew and cry is coming from.
The far greater hazard in tsunami-stricken areas is contaminated drinking water. Clean water is the most immediate need for most of the stricken areas. Disaster aid folks are saying that they expect big problems from diarrhea diseases in the next week of two, before clean water is restored. US warships have been sent to some areas, because the ships have water purification plants on board.
The problem here is that the water purification plants aboard warships are of limited capacity. Don’t get me wrong, they’re portable (that is they go where the ships go), and can make goodly amounts of water, and get there quickly. But, more often than not, the capacity of such plants is based on their own needs: X gallons per day for the various engineering needs, plus a nominal 25 gallons per man per day, for all hotel loads: Not simply drinking and washing water for the crew, but cooking, cleaning, laundry, etc.
Now, being anchored does lower the engineering demands, but - still we’re talking about 10,000 gallons capacity for the plants we had on my ship. Carriers I think use more than the two we had, or else have larger ones. Still it’s farting in the wind. A start. That’s all.
Heh wha? E. coli is “not dangerous” because people already carry it in their bodies? Guess that’s one analysis we can eliminate at the waste treatment plant, save a few government bucks.
I am genuinely surprised at the WHO putting forth such a crock of… well… I’ll avoid the obvious pun.
Yup, bodies, alive are dead aren’t infectious. That’s why I don’t have to wash my hands between each patient I see in hospital, even if all I did is shake their hand…Oh wait, I DO have to wash my hands!
When a friend contracted a certain bacterial enterocolitis, she was told that the only reason she wasn’t brought into hospital as a public health risk was because she had an ensuite bathroom at home. She was told to keep it solely for her own use until her treatment was finished and to disinfect it thoroughly every day.
Thousands of bodies lying in 40 degree heat, full sunlight and humid conditions aren’t going to cause the plague, but when you have limited healthcare, water and soil contamination could cause diarrhoeal illnesses which could decimate the survivors.
(They’re taking DNA samples and labelling the graves, so that the victims can be identified and burial places given to families at some future date.)
Err, I think there’s a definite difference in the OP’s title and question. Dead bodies can carry disease if they already were infected. Why does everyone think everyone who died was perfectly healthy? We are talking about 125,000+ people here in 3rd world countries where various diseases, almost unheard of here in North America, exist.
Plus, you can’t discount the effect rats will have on the population. Sure, they’ll always be a good rat population (although many would have drown) but now you have a population without protection against any disease, you don’t want to leave rotting bodies around and let the rat population explode. That’s a recipe for disaster.
Even now an archeoligist digging up a plague victim has to be careful, I think.
But the most direct threat is obviously the fact that sea water has contaminated the sweet water supplies in many areas and taken apart the infrastructure. Therefore a shortage of safe water comes up and more people will risk unsafe water, people who are already weakened by the disaster.
But leaving garbage out does also spur on rats and similar animals, and leaving thousands of dead lying around will have a similar effect eventually I suspect. But I do believe the WHO are correct when they say this is a comparatively small risk.
People whose houses or jobsites or essential possessions were destroyed, as well as losing one or more family or friends, and who may be damaged themselves, and who see chaos and disaster around them, are already upset enough without having to live next rotting corpses. I say bury the corpses.
Situational depression is real enough. People need to see that things are being brought back to normal, and some control is returning to their lives.
This is straying from the OP, however. It may be that decaying corpses do not create a large increase in disease, but everyone would want to clean them up, and they may give disease as a reason, rather than being narrowly scientific about it.