Lex Berko explains the dangers of trying too hard to preserve a loved one’s body:
Exploding casket syndrome, as it is known in the death industry, occurs when these decomposition processes are not given adequate space to perform. In her awesome “Ask a Mortician” series, mortician Caitlin Doughty says, “You really want a decomposing body to have access to some sort of air so it can then dehydrate. But if it’s one of those super sealed protective caskets, there’s really no place for all of that gas and fluid to go and so the body can kind of turn into sort of a bog.” Eventually, when the pressure builds high enough in that boggy tank of a casket, pop!
The Dish 