I feel a little sad to think that all I may become is ashes (AnnaLee) This page considers what is left of you once the crematorium incinerator has done its work.   It seeks to answer questions you might ask:

• What will my ashes (or as they are sometimes called cremains) look like?
• What will left of my casket?
• What will be left of me?
• How much will be left of me?
• Can my ashes be turned into diamonds?
• Will they be my ashes?

Left.   Remains of your cremated body as swept from the oven.   Larger bone fragments are still identifiable.   Part of your hip bone is being held up.

Right   Your bone fragments are swept into a cremulator to be ground into a uniform size.

In the TABO crembola your ashes are put into a drum which is perforated like a sieve, so your ashes can only drop out when they have been ground small enough.   The drum is rotated with an electric motor.   During the first turn of the drum, the milling-balls, which later pulverize all that is left of you, are detached. Your pulverized remains fall, as you are ground down and down ever smaller and smaller, into an urn or pan.   When the milling is finished, the drum momentarily ceases to rotate and then starts again in the opposite direction. The milling-balls are caught by a ball catcher and the scrap metal (nails from your casket, your artificial joints) is automatically emptied into a separate pan. Some crematorium use a ash "mill" with a flailing titanium chain, rather than metal balls, but the result is the same: you are ground smaller and smaller.

The process of powdering you can take up to 30 minutes, but the Facultatieve Technologies High Speed Cremulator will grind you up in two minutes.

• Phosphate 47.5%
• Calcium 25.3%
• Sulfate 11.00%
• Potassium 3.69%
• Sodium 1.12%
• Chloride 1.00%
• Silica 0.9%
• Aluminum oxide 0.72%

98% of people will fit in a 200 cubic inch urn (Cremation Association of North America survey).   Apparently your ashes may fill more than one urn, especially if were a particularly large person.   The further your remains are processed (powdered) the less volume you will occupy.   If you were a fit young guy with denser bones, you will leave a greater volume of ash behind.

What more could any guy want than to be turned into that diamond that just finishes off a gorgeous girl's outfit.   Maybe in a nice necklace or in a ring.

Diamonds are carbon. Your ashes will contain some carbon although it was not included in O'Neill's analysis.

However, there isn't much carbon in your ashes compared to the amount of Phosphate and Calcium.   This is why the earliest - (circa 2002) - process to turn you into a diamond for one of your love's rings, employed incineration interruptus and a special carbon collection kit.   The door of the cremation chamber is opened.   Four ounces of tissue are removed from one of your organs and put in a special sealed conatiner.   A cover is put on the container and it is placed back in the retort.   At the end of the process the container is removed from the chamber. Your organ material has been reduced to dry, crispy flakes.  

A crucible containing your carbon is placed in a vacuum induction furnace.   All oxygen is pumped out from the furnace and the temperature sent up to 3000 degrees F.   The high temperature removes impurities, but because their is no oxygen the carbon is preserved and transformed into graphite by the high temperature.

You (a little pile of graphite powder) are placed in a diamond press and subjected to 900,000 pounds per square inch at 3000 degrees F.   The longer you stay in the press, the bigger the gem you turn into.

Don't throw your love away you might need him someday
But now (in 2005/6) it is possible to actually make diamonds out of your ashes.   To turn you into a diamond, LifeGem takes 8-ounces of your ashes.   You are purified at about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit.   The high temperature vaporizes all of the noncarbon elements in your ashes and converts the carbon into crystallized graphite.   Pretty hot stuff, most of you has already been incinerated at 2,000 degrees, and now almost all of the little that was left vaporizes.

Next, in a diamond press, your carbon is subjected to heat and hydraulic pressure. This causes the graphite to break down into individual carbon atoms and recrystallize as a diamond.   The patented process takes about six months.

This young lady likes her jewelry, perhaps she'd like a LifeGem of grandad? (see inset)   But there is always a cynic to piss on the parade.   Mark Gershburg, director of European Gemological Laboratory (an independent laboratory that vouches for the quality of diamonds), points out it is impossible to distinguish LifeGem synthetic diamonds from other synthetic diamonds.   If that's the case, what stops LifeGems from producing synthetic diamonds from ordinary graphite, then passing them off as a bit of your dear uncle Harry?   Indeed, what stops them from buying synthetic diamonds from other suppliers and reselling them to the bereaved at large mark-ups?

This site would not support this foul and baseless suspicion.   LifeGem lawyers please note.   In fact we would encourage the young lady (right) to talk to grandad about becoming a LifeGem.   It has been said that blue LifeGems were produced with the addition of the boron as a dopant, since the boron found in cremains is only trace element, and not sufficient colour the gem.   But who cares if a bit of outside colour has been added?

Cool idea.   If some other guy is screwing Tim's wife, a little bit of Tim will always be close to the action.   But wait, can he afford it?   LifeGem charge $2300 to even produce a 0.2 caret gem.   So yet again, the rich guy gets close to the girl.

A word of perspective; the vast majority of cremation professionals follow strict procedures to ensure your relatives will get the right ashes back (see Should you be cremated).

But there are a few cases where the wrong ashes were returned, and sometimes only fake ashes.   Most notably the Tri-State scandal in the USA.   Such scandals are less likely, but not impossible, in the UK and Europe where cremation is more tightly regulated.

How easy is it to fake human ashes?   Take a walk along the beach and you'll find lots of material to make fake cremains.

So after Sandra is incinerated, will the urn contain Sandy or just be sandy?

Even if the "cremains" are not realistic the family may never know "It is common practice for those receiving cremains not to actually look at them, not to open the vessel," says Dr. Gretchen Potts

Physicists from the university of Florida showed that the ashes from a South Florida family contained calcium, which would be consistent with human bone.   But they also showed that the ashes did not contain phosphorous, another prominent ingredient in bone.   The physicist’s conclusion: The urns did not contain human remains. "We think it’s a mixture of sandy soil with a little lime rock," they said. "Whoever did this was not entirely stupid, because lime rock contains calcium, which is also in bone."

Acid bath
If you don't like the idea of particles being shot at your ashes, they can be dissolved in acid instead.   Using a method developed at the University of Tennessee, samples of your ashes are digested on a hotplate in nitric acid and hydrogen peroxide.   Your digested remains are then processed using an "inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer" and the machine's output compared with that produced from cremains known to be genuine.   The university has been analysing ashes produced by incinerating medical school cadavers to establish the range of element concentrations in genuine cremains.

Five pounds of mixed ashes please
Imagine this.   Your ashes wait at the funeral home.   Uncollected. Unloved.   One day the funeral home owner takes your urn off the shelf and pours your ashes into a bucket.   The bucket already contains the unclaimed ashes of a 22 year old sex worker who died tragically of a drug overdose.   Next morning the ashes of a 25 year old gay man who died in an over enthusiastic bondage session are added to the bucket.

That afternoon the pastor of the local Evangelical Baptist Church arrives to collect the ashes of his dearly departed God fearing mother.   But the ashes have not been collected from the crematory.   No problem.   About five pounds of ashes are scooped out of the bucket and poured into an urn.   The pastor takes the urn.   You (or some of you anyway) and your new found friends are on your way to a nice Christian burial.   Far fetched fiction?   Of course.   But not as far fetched as you might think... now read on.

Funeral director Roger Barker stored ashes from cremations in a bucket in his shed and then passed them off as the remains of the victim of a motorbike accident.

In fact Barker had failed to collect the deceased's ashes in time for the scattering, which was witnessed by his grieving parents.  Instead he used those he had kept in the shed at the bottom of his garden, Oxford Crown Court was told.

During his trial, staff from his company, based in Didcot, England, told the jury that their boss often ordered them to do "a Granny Smith", which meant filling an urn with left-over remains from the garden shed if nobody had got around to collecting the right ashes.

Personally I would have no problem having my ashes thrown into Roger Barker's bucket.   A chance to mix with new people.   A chance to get to new places - the ashes from my feet to one place and those from my skull to another.   But I'm a nihilist with a very sick sense of humour.

(The bikers pictured have nothing to do with the story, but they are bikers - and both quite tastey).

• "Cremation in America" by Fred Rosen, 2004, Prometheus Books, ISBN 1-59102-136-7.   Lots of information on the Tri-State scandal, using carbon from a cremation to make diamonds and lots more.   "the book is a quick, easy and entertaining read"   (S. M. Rubinstein Phd).
  
  
• "The Disposal of the Dead" by C.J. Polson, R.P. Brittain and T.R. Marshall, 1953, Constable.   In many ways of historical interest only.   Although it is interesting how little the process of cremation has changed.   Cremains were still ground up back then but, "the remains are .... crushed to a fine ash with a pestle and mortar" (p.125).   There might have been no microprocessor control but phrases like "the chamber is heated by gas jets fixed in the walls" ... "the coffin rests on the hearth ... the ashes fall into the combustion chamber where incineration is completed.   They are then raked into an ash pit" (p.116-117) sound very modern.
  
  
• "A Handfull of Dust" by Vera Lustig in the big Issue No 95 (Sept 1994)

• The information on the incandescence of cremains is from a review by Dr Gyan C. A. Fernando of Fred Rosen's book.   This page is no longer available.
  
  
• Points South 2004 gives an interesting photo story on cremation in the US state of Florida.
  
  
• Scopes.com article on "Cremlining" (snorting ashes in mistake for cocaine) gives a lot of information on the appearance of cremains
  
  
• Croydon Crematorium is an interesting account of the author's visit to a Croydon Crematorium open day.   This page claims that average adult body yields about 3kg of ashes, about half of which is usually derived from the timber coffin.   According to contributors on Yahoo Cremation Group the amount may of coffin ash be less depending on the type of timber used.
  
  
• Wilipedia has a good and evolving article on cremation including a little on ash processing.

• Open Day At The Northern Suburbs Crematorim is an account of the author's trip to an Austrialian Crematorium openday.   I would would not support the attempt at re-writing holocaust history in this page.
  
  
• TABO and Facultatieve Technologies give information to their ash processors.
  
  
• Details of the chemical composition of cremated remains can be found on the CANA Website under Articles of Interest
  
  
• The sad story of Julie Shumney who may have been given someone-else's ashes mixed in with her husband's provides some background information on the amount of ash that can be expected from a cremation.   Unfortunately the Dallas News will charge you for reading this story.
  
  
• Details of how the University of Florida verifies that cremains are genuine can be found at To answer cremation questions....

• The University of Tenessese approach to cremains analysis is found Inside the Urn
  
  
• There is lots of material on ashes into diamonds - although none explain very much. LifeGems' own site is a good place to start.
  
  
• DragonFire has a long article.  Other useful articles include The Beacon Journal, The Guardian, and the Bunurong Memorial Park - an Australian crematorium.
  
  
• A critical, if not downright cynical, view of ashes into diamonds may be found at Snopes
  
  
• Details of Paris Hilton's funeral home "job" can be found at The Simple Life. More about Paris can be found at News and Entertainment
  
  
• Roger Baker's story us from The Telegraph