‘We may need to use JCBs to bury obese’

OBESE Scots may soon have to be buried using mechanical diggers to prevent injuries to cemetery staff, campaigners have warned.

Crematoria across the country have already revealed that oversized caskets are becoming too big for furnaces.

Now, in the latest incident, an Inverclyde Council worker has been forced to take sick leave after damaging his back lifting a 32-stone coffin.

Bosses at the local authority alerted the health and safety watchdog about the episode, which happened during a funeral ceremony.

Last night, Tam Fry, spokesman for the National Obesity Forum, said burying fat people will soon require ‘industrial JCBs and heavy-duty hoists’.

He added: ‘I fear that the inevitable result of morbid obesity will mean death, interment and cremation becoming more gruesome.

‘In many areas, graves have already had to be doubled in size.

‘Not only have many crematoria had to be replaced but cremations for very fat corpses limited to around 9.30 in the morning because their ashes are less likely to clog up the furnace burners at that time.’

The latest incident came to light in a report on accidents recently presented to councillors on Inverclyde’s policy and resources committee.

It stated that the worker was ‘lifting heavy coffin (32st) from hearse to graveside and strained muscle lowering on to putlogs [the poles that lie across the open grave]’.

The Health and Safety Executive was notified because the employee was off work for more than a week.

Scotland’s obesity crisis has left 29 per cent of the adult population officially fat. Unions insist that the epidemic is putting at risk workers right across the public sector, including the health and emergency services.

Jim McGinn, Unite’s Ayrshire and Arran NHS branch secretary, said: ‘This is a societal change we have to deal with and lessons need to be learnt because the problem’s on the increase.

‘The NHS is ahead of the game in terms of its staff training but it’s now about making sure that good practice is disseminated to other services.’

He added: ‘Nobody in the health service lifts people any more. They move them instead, but growing numbers of bariatric [obese] patients are certainly presenting challenges. We’ve seen the introduction of things like specialist beds, hoists and wheelchairs and it’s certainly having an impact on the NHS.

‘Things had to change because chronic back problems are now common among staff and musculoskeletal injuries are the major cause of absenteeism in the NHS, alongside stress.’

The National Association of Funeral Directors revealed recently that councils were having to invest in larger furnaces to cope with super-sized coffins, while the tradition of family members lowering caskets into the ground was being abandoned in some cases for fear of accidents.

‘Graves have been doubled in size’