Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.

“Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.” is a supplemental task performed by Embalmers. Among the occupation's 26 rated tasks, workers place it 1st by importance (#26 most important). About 43% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Embalm corpses. in Handling and Moving Objects

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Conform to laws of health and sanitation and ensure that legal requirements concerning embalming are met. · importance 4.8
• Apply cosmetics to impart lifelike appearance to the deceased. · importance 4.7
• Join lips, using needles and thread or wire. · importance 4.7
• Incise stomach and abdominal walls and probe internal organs, using trocar, to withdraw blood and waste matter from organs. · importance 4.7
• Close incisions, using needles and sutures. · importance 4.7
• Clean and disinfect areas in which bodies are prepared and embalmed. · importance 4.7
• Dress bodies and place them in caskets. · importance 4.7
• Make incisions in arms or thighs and drain blood from circulatory system and replace it with embalming fluid, using pump. · importance 4.6
• Remove the deceased from place of death and transport to funeral home. · importance 4.6
• Perform the duties of funeral directors, including coordinating funeral activities. · importance 4.6
• Attach trocar to pump-tube, start pump, and repeat probing to force embalming fluid into organs. · importance 4.5
• Reshape or reconstruct disfigured or maimed bodies when necessary, using dermasurgery techniques and materials such as clay, cotton, plaster of Paris, and wax. · importance 4.5
• Pack body orifices with cotton saturated with embalming fluid to prevent escape of gases or waste matter. · importance 4.5
• Conduct interviews to arrange for the preparation of obituary notices, to assist with the selection of caskets or urns, and to determine the location and time of burials or cremations. · importance 4.5

See all tasks on the Embalmers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-4510,
  title  = {Press diaphragm to evacuate air from lungs.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-4510}
}