Removing oxygen prevents decomposition. My home town found out the hard way when they took samples from an old landfill, expecting to be able to build a park ov

Removing oxygen prevents decomposition. My home town found out the hard way when they took samples from an old landfill, expecting to be able to build a park over it. Clay layers had been added to prevent runoff into a nearby river, and as a result the newspapers were still readable decades later.