How to Avoid Corpse-Flavored Water

As organisms decompose their chemical and bacterial components can leach into the surrounding ground and water. The bodies buried in cemeteries are no exception.

Hosted by: Michael Aranda

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[SciShow]

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[cinnamontins]

Never did I think I would have to worry about corpse flavored water but now I do

[cj]

Fun fact: you don't have to have your body embalmed or even buried in a coffin/casket, thereby preventing carcinogenic embalming fluid and other dangerous chemicals from entering the ecosystem (carcinogens are also released into the atmosphere when an embalmed body is cremated)
"ask a mortician" has a lot of great videos on this topic if you're interested.

[ailivac]

In college I took a local history class where one of the sites we learned about was a large public cemetery that was notable for being one of the first built in the mid 19th century in a designated place away from the currently populated city center, as opposed to earlier locations that were usually just small church yards. This was because people had started to understand the health implications of keeping dead bodies too close to things like water supplies.

It's also interesting because of the rugged terrain full of glacial eskers, and the fact that it has more burials than the current population of the city (put another way, well over half the people in the city are dead).

[eliasbram]

I remember my teacher telling about the master's degree of his friend in this particular subject. The amount of "corpse flavored Tang" was allegedly disturbing in some small towns he went

[Nodz]

My BSc was in civil engineering. While I didn’t go in-depth in this topic, cemetery design was mentioned on soil mechanics 101. I couldn’t help but notice engineering concerns of cemeteries are eerily similar to landfill design

[cindystrachan]

I had friends who lived in the country about half a mile from a very old cemetery. They were advised not to drink or cook with their well water as it contained “decaying animal matter”. Never cared to eat at their home after learning that.

[bogbert]

This is super neat! I never really thought about how cemeteries could impact the groundwater like that. I grew up near multiple cemeteries near lots of lakes and ponds, so I wonder how much corpse contamination I've experienced

[irifhir]

This thumbnail is a master class in constructive use of clickbait, psychology, linguistics, symbolism, geometry and color.
I love you guys so much S2

[brandyrose]

As always, SciShow provides catchy and tasteful content

[grimmschmidt]

I loved this episode, but honestly, I want it to be longer than four minutes. Specifically, because humans are weird squirmy creatures, and the past two years have been kind of a lot more Deathy and communicable-diseasey than usual: Do you mind a follow-up, or even a sci-show callback to earlier episodes on the advances of water treatment, the green burial alternatives, and how modern cities prevent water-based illnesses from ravaging their population? (Tangental, but equally interesting to me is the reason flouride is in some city water, and how that is honestly a good thing for lower income communities.)

Also, Michael: Your hair is MAGNIFICENT, I actually screamed when I saw it this episode. Whatever you're doing with your haircare regimen, keep doing it. Top-tier Science mane. You've got Kyle Hill running for his money.

[DAndyLord]

Does anyone remember the story of the woman who ended up in a N̶e̶w̶ ̶Y̶o̶r̶k̶ (EDIT) Los Angeles hotel's water tank? She was there for a while while guests complained about the taste and smell of the water.

[PhilLesh]

I happened to read a London newspaper while on the toilet in my London hotel about twenty years ago that had an article about a professor at one of the local colleges who would take water samples from the Thames river downstream from where the city dumped their processed sewage. He did this in order to track the amount and breadth of recreational drug use, as well as prescribed pharmaceutical usage in the city over time. He was able to correlate trace levels of cocaine metabolites in the parts per billion level, for example, to estimate how many people had used cocaine in the past 24 or 48 hours and excreted it into the toilets with their urine. They could detect birth control pills use, ecstasy use, Viagra use, etc.

So, this also means those things are in our drinking water. Because most cities get their water from a river that has lots of other cities upstream.

[DanielSMatthews]

AFAIK there are no cemeteries in Australia that are within a relevant distance to a municipal water catchment or storage facility. We do use massive desalination plants for sea water, which is absolutely full of living and dead things, but not even ions get past the reverse osmosis membranes used.

[IncoherentEggoByproduct]

I lived in a small town in Kansas for a year and there was a big cemetery near where the well water was pulled from for the house. At one point the water came out really oddly colored and smelling grossly sweet. I didn’t touch it but was told that something had broken and they just needed to clean out the pipes. I wound up going to a friends for a week anyway but I always wondered what that was.

Thanks for making me connect dots that I never wanted to connect. I’ll send you the bill for my therapy.

[laramaria]

When I was a child I always heard about cemetery fruits being the most delicious. Mangoes specially.
Always found that oddly specific.

[jeremygreer]

I've enjoyed watching this dude's appearance change over the years.

[HippoOnABicycle]

Corpse flavoured water is one of those rare cases where homeopathy sometimes works -if you drink just a drop of corpse water you can turn into a corpse yourself.

[scarletletter]

This is why we need the option of postmortem composting.

[kaitlynoddie]

“getting too in touch with your ancestors” was funnier than it had any right to be