Free Republic

DUBLIN -- In a stainless-steel cabinet between two gurneys, Josh Moonman stores bottles of a pink fluid, labeled with skulls and crossbones, that is used for embalming bodies. "If I were to open one of those lids now and let you smell it, it would knock you back," says Mr. Moonman, an embalmer for Ireland's Fanagan Group of mortuaries. Because the fluid contains formaldehyde, which is poisonous, European Union regulators are considering banning the chemical as a potential threat to human health and the environment. Among the worries, environmentalists say: decaying bodies leaching toxic chemicals into the ground. But a...

The strange mixture of joy and grief that marks a traditional Irish funeral, with its week-long drink-fuelled wake, is under threat from a European directive. The Irish custom that sees corpses kept in an open coffin so the deceased can be viewed during the wake has been endangered by an edict issued by Stavros Dimas, the EU environment commissioner. He wants chemicals used by embalmers to preserve the cadaver withdrawn under a new biocides directive. Such a move would see the end of the age-old ritual of "laying out" the body while games are played and food and drink are...