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Mushroom Death Suit

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REALLY Thinking Ahead

Bioartist Jae Rhim Lee has invented a flesh-eating Mushroom Death Suit.

It's exactly what it sounds like. Since 2008, Lee has been culturing mushrooms to decompose her flesh, hair, nails, and other body parts.

According to the CDC, we have 219 toxic chemicals in our bodies that end up back in the eco-system when we die no matter what we do.

So we keep polluting even after we die. If we are embalmed and buried in a conventional casket, we are part of the 827,000 gallons of embalming fluid and 90,000 tons of steel going into graveyards every year in the United States. Cremation? It still puts toxins and carbon emissions into the air. Lee claims that 5,000 lbs of mercury from dental fillings alone are released every year this way.

Even a green burial does not address the toxins in our bodies leaking into the ground.

Lee's mushroom death suit is an alternate burial system that uses mushrooms to decompose and clean toxins in our bodies. See the crocheted netting on the garment? That is embedded with mushroom spores.

She's been developing a new strain of fungus, the Infinity Mushroom, that feeds on and remediates the industrial toxins we store in our bodies, converting them efficiently into nutrients.

Jae Rhim Lee has figured out how to convert toxic corpses into clean compost! Talk about really thinking ahead! Bravo!

--Bibi Farber

This video was produced by Ted Talks