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June 15, 2012
Q. Could your dead body last “forever” entombed or encased in plastic (polymers)?
A. Forever is a very long time, so maybe we should just talk about a body staying intact for centuries, answers the University of Arizona's Kenneth V. Iserson, author of “Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies.” Simply entombing or encasing a body won't do anything but keep the decay within the container and stop critters from getting to the corpse. Bodies decay from the inside out with, of course, a little help from insects (or sea life if the body is in water). Generally the body's own chemicals and bacteria do most of the decomposition.
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