Asphyxiation was most likely the cause of death for seven victims of the volcanic explosion that buried the ancient Roman city of Pompeii, according to an elemental study of plaster casts from those individuals. When Mount Vesuvius erupted in the year 79CE, the research used portable x-ray fluorescence (XRF) technology to acquire insight into the dying moments of people who resided in the city.

Plaster was initially injected into the crevices left by bodies rotting beneath the volcanic ash in the 1870s to create the first casts from Pompeii. The casts still have the original body shape and contain skeleton fragments because of how they were created.

While these molds have provided information about the eruption and its aftereffects, the contamination with plaster has made it challenging to analyze the biological material. “The main [components] of the plaster and the bones are [calcium-based], but the proportion of phosphorous changes”, according to Gianni Gallello, the project's principal investigator and an archaeologist at the University of Valencia in Spain.

The researchers examined the elemental compositions of six casts from the Porta Nola region of Pompeii and one from Terme Suburbane using portable XRF to the compositions of bones that were either cremated locally before the eruption or buried in Valencia, Spain. The scientists created a statistical model to distinguish between plaster and bones within the castings by concentrating on the phosphorous-to-calcium ratios of the samples. According to Gallello, “the contaminated bones are very similar to the plaster while the less contaminated bones are similar to the burned bones.” It is thought that the chemical processes that led to the leaching of carbonates and phosphates are responsible for this resemblance to charred bones.

The fundamental information shows that the Porta Nola victims died of hypoxia brought on by breathing in ash before their bodies were buried under more volcanic material. The victims' prone, relaxed positions and the cast bones' chemical resemblance to incinerated bones, according to the experts, point to suffocation as the cause of death.

These findings are supported by Piero Dellino, a volcanology professor at the University of Bari in Italy. Neither the mechanics nor other stuff killed any people. He claims that people died as a result of breathing ash. The eruption persisted for a few minutes longer than was safe for breathing, not because it was hot.

The value of teamwork in science is one of Gallello's main takeaways from the piece. "A multidisciplinary approach is really essential in these kind of studies," he claims. In order to investigate these extraordinary remains, "a multidisciplinary approach is really essential in these kind of studies."

Dellino agrees with this statement. Because this world is complicated, he claims, fragmenting research and focusing solely on the biological, ecological, environmental, or geological element doesn't present the whole story.

According to Dellino, researching the past of the Vesuvius region enables people to both understand the past and plan for the future. The most dangerous volcano in the world is Vesuvius. 700,000 people are put in danger in the red zone [around] Vesuvius, he claims. If you study a thunderstorm or a significant flood, you learn virtually little about what happened at the time. However, after the occurrence, it's like a crime scene: you can learn a lot about it and then create plans for [future] mitigation.