{"id":108515,"date":"2020-11-10T17:26:57","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T00:26:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=108515"},"modified":"2020-11-10T17:26:57","modified_gmt":"2020-11-11T00:26:57","slug":"science-behind-burying-covid-19-infected-dead-bodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/11\/10\/science-behind-burying-covid-19-infected-dead-bodies\/","title":{"rendered":"SCIENCE BEHIND BURYING COVID 19 INFECTED DEAD BODIES."},"content":{"rendered":"

Ranjiith Soysa <\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

Attn the HON ALI SABRY
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dear Minister.
kindly note the following.
Thanks<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SCIENCE BEHIND BURYING COVID 19 INFECTED DEAD BODIES.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

,,,,WHO RECOMMENDATIONS SUIT TEMPERATE COUNTRIES ,NOT\nTROPICAL HIGH RAIN HIGH TEMPERATURE COUNTRIES The Sri Lankan Scientist- – by\nMeththika Vithanage – – <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Meththika Vithanage (Ph.D. in Hydrogeology;\nProf. in Natural Resources) Director, Ecosphere Resilience Research Centre, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Sri\nlayewardenepura meththika@sjp.ac.lk<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

With\nmore than two third of the world is under lock down due to Covid-19, many\ncountries are facing problems that they have never encountered before. Those\nproblems range from quarantine issues to last rights of the people die from\nthis infection. In a viral pandemic like COVID-19, the concern is that the dead\nbodies of victims can spread the virus among the people who closely handle or\nwork with them. At the same time there is a huge debate on whether burying the\nbodies of COVID-19 victims may facilitate the viral spread through the ground\nwater table. In this article we try to look back at scientific literature and\nreview the risk of ground water contamination through the burial of viral\ndisease victims\u2019 dead bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nhas been a well-known fact that the cemeteries are among the chief\nanthropogenic sources of pollution and contamination of groundwater in urban\nareas and beyond, in the area of hydrogeology. In the process of decomposition\nof a human body, 0.4-0.6 liters of leachate is produced per 1 kg of body\nweight, which may contain pathogenic bacteria and viruses that may contaminate\nthe groundwater. Burial in any means causes soil contamination and then leads\nto groundwater pollution via the discharge of inorganic nutrients, nitrate,\nphosphate, ammonia, chlorides etc. and various microorganisms. High biochemical\nand chemical oxygen demands, ammonia, and organic carbon have been reported as\nhigh as several hundreds of mg in L from cemeteries and mass burial sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe case of viruses, recent studies indicate that viral may transport in soil\nwith rainfall infiltration and extends specifically to drinking water from an\nuntreated groundwater source. Several scientific publications report virus\noccurrence rates of about 30 percent of groundwater. Virus transport in\ngroundwater is associated with a high degree of temporal and spatial\nvariability, which is often attributed to absorption, filtration, soil water\ncontent, temperature, pH, type of virus, and hydraulic stresses and climatic\nconditions. It has been observed that viruses in groundwater can be correlated\nwith their concentrations in wastewater and with groundwater recharge events.\nThe ex-filtration from sewers and cemeteries are the most likely source of\nhuman viruses to this groundwater system, and leakage from sewers during heavy\nprecipitation enhanced virus transport. The transport is often associated with\nboth the unsaturated and saturated subsurface composed of varying geological\nsettings with corresponding hydro-geological variability. Included among the\nessential hydro-geological factors that can be used to evaluate viral transport\nare the flux of moisture in the unsaturated zone, the media through which the\nparticles travel, porosity, the length of the flow path, and the time of travel.\nIn Sri Lanka, we experience high rainfall, low groundwater table, highly porous\nsubsurface soil, and fractured rocks compared to most temperate countries in\nthe world, which may lead the transport of biological and chemical compounds\nfrom dead bodies. Although WHO recommendation guidelines suit temperate\ncountries mainly, not tropical high-temperature high rainfall countries where\nwe experience high decomposition rates and highly variable water table. This is\nwhere the local hydro-geological knowledge is essential to protect groundwater\nas well as forthcoming infection occurrence. Given the vulnerability of our\ngroundwater aquifers, and lack of understanding about the behavior of COVID-19\nvirus, there can be a risk from dead bodies, septic waste or sanitary waste are\nhaving any contact with water sources. Hence, it is advisable to have careful\nmeasures in destroying the infected dead bodies, septic, and sanitary waste in\nproper conditions without provisioning chances for any future disease outbreak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ranjiith Soysa Attn the HON ALI SABRY Dear Minister.kindly note the following.Thanks SCIENCE BEHIND BURYING COVID 19 INFECTED DEAD BODIES. ,,,,WHO RECOMMENDATIONS SUIT TEMPERATE COUNTRIES ,NOT TROPICAL HIGH RAIN HIGH TEMPERATURE COUNTRIES The Sri Lankan Scientist- – by Meththika Vithanage – – Prof. Meththika Vithanage (Ph.D. in Hydrogeology; Prof. in Natural Resources) Director, Ecosphere Resilience […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108515"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108515\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}