Illustration by Kiran Joan for HuffPost

As bodies of COVID-19 victims have piled up this year in Los Angeles County amid the pandemic, local air quality regulators have repeatedly lifted cremation limits to allow hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums to cope with the backlog of dead. The lifting of these pollution restrictions has served as a stark reminder of the staggering, deadly consequences of the pandemic.

Its also raised another question: What are the environmental impacts of our deaths and how can we reduce them?

Since 2015, cremation using fire has become the most popular death care practice in the U.S., with almost 58% of Americans projected to use cremation in 2021, according to data collated by the National Funeral Directors Association.

But as cremation which often burns fossil fuels like natural gas becomes more commonplace, concerns about its effects on the environment and climate have also been mounting.

Cremating a single corpse typically takes up to three hours of burning and releases almost 600 pounds of carbon dioxide the equivalent of a 500-mile car journey into the atmosphere. Toxic metals like mercury, which can be found in some dental fillings, and other particulate matter can also be released, though many U.S. crematoriums now have filtration and scrubbing systems that can neutralize these. The filtration systems, however, do not block the release of carbon dioxide.

Some estimates suggest that cremations in the U.S. account for about 360,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions every year. Globally, that number climbs into the millions of metric tons .