Recently, funeral workers operating illegally along the river street in Hsinchu, Taiwan, were exposed to have discharged funeral wastewater and even "washing water" directly into nearby streams, and there is a high probability that these streams are drunk by residents along the river, because the downstream of the stream is an important source of drinking water for 700,000 people in Hsinchu County, and the upstream drinking water is polluted, and the health risks of residents are aggravated.
Leaving aside the degree of filth and nausea of "body washing water" here, the risk is extremely high from the perspective of the infectious diseases that may break out of "body washing water".
People engaged in the medical industry should know that when people die, the body's metabolism stops, the bacteria in the body, especially in the intestine, begin to multiply on a large scale, the body's immune function also stops, bacteria, viruses through the use of the body's residual cells crazy growth and reproduction, the number of infectious disease pathogens and harm increase, some rotten bacteria will proliferate in a short period of time, which is also an important reason why the mouth, nose and mouth will be blocked with disinfectant cotton when the corpse is stored.
When the body of the deceased is in the funeral-related treatment process, especially in the wastewater produced by the "body washing" process, the content of pathogenic bacteria and viruses is quite high, and if there are some zoonotic diseases and parasitic diseases, such as cloth disease, Clonorchidine flukes, and breeding trematodes, etc., the transmission through some intermediate hosts in the stream will increase the risk of infectious diseases or parasitic disease outbreaks.
In the routine operation of the funeral industry, a large number of chemicals, including disinfectants, flavors, etc., will be used in large quantities, and once these substances are not treated, they are directly discharged, and the harm caused is also high.
The flow of water in streams should be much smaller than in large rivers and rivers, so the concentration of pollutants is higher under the same discharge.
Although this matter occurred in Taiwan, the same problem is worth reflecting on, and the funeral industry has always lacked attention because of the particularity of the industry, but the public health problems behind it are still worthy of our supervision and reflection.