OK...we're not allowed to flush old medications down the toilet for fear we'd contaminate our drinking water supplies...but we would be allowed to pour 200 gallons of human broth ppr (per person resomated) down the drain?
Sorry...something just doesn't add up.
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States consider: Is it legal to dissolve bodies?
The Gazette
June 02, 2011 12:25 PM
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
_________________________IN COLORADO:
Changes taking effect this year will allow alkaline hydrolysis in Colorado, Kansas and Maryland. Gov. John Hickenlooper signed a Colorado bill into law April 6. It was already legal in Florida, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon. New York and California also are considering allowing it.
_________________________
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Hal Shimp didn't want a traditional send-off after death. He didn't want a big, somber service, and he certainly didn't want to be buried.
When the 91-year-old World War II veteran died in February after a cancer battle, his body tissue was dissolved using heat and lye, turning it into a liquid that could be poured down a drain and a dry bone residue given to relatives, who plan to scatter it when they plant a tree in his honor.
His family in Ohio saw it as a more environmentally friendly option than cremation and a fitting choice for a progressive-thinking guy who used to gather aluminum cans and cardboard for recycling.
"We thought this matched the kind of gentle soul that Hal was," said his daughter-in-law, Cathy Bregar.
Ohio is the only state where the method, called alkaline hydrolysis, has been used in the funeral industry, but others are increasingly allowing for it, spurred by a push from interested crematories and equipment manufacturers or by a desire to have regulations ready if the process comes to their regions.
Proponents say it has lower operating costs and is greener than traditional cremation because it does not cause the emissions that incineration does, such as carbon dioxide and mercury from dental fillings. But skeptics question the social implications of sending someone's remains down the drain, and whether it's safe for the environment and public health.
A half-dozen states in recent years have opened the door for it, several by removing references to flame or direct heat from their definitions of cremation.
Changes taking effect this year will allow alkaline hydrolysis in Kansas, Maryland and Colorado, where the governor signed a bill into law April 6. It was already legal in Florida, Maine, Minnesota and Oregon. New York and California also are considering allowing it.
The Mayo Clinic in Minnesota and the University of Florida use it for human cadavers, and it's been used for two decades on animal carcasses.
Also known as resomation, the method uses lye — a type of corrosive chemical used to make soaps and cleaners — in combination with heat and sometimes extra pressure in a large metal cylinder. It breaks down a body into two main substances: a coffee-colored liquid of nutrients, sugars and protein parts that is discarded and a dry bone residue that can be given to relatives or buried, much like a cremation.
It is generating buzz in panel discussions and presentations at funeral industry association meetings, but regulatory hurdles have tripped up the few U.S. facilities that have seriously considered using it.
Some believe it's the next big thing in the industry as people increasingly choose cremation over burial. Both of those methods have been used for thousands of years, although cremation didn't catch on in the United States until the 20th century. Slightly more than one-third of all U.S. deaths annually resulted in cremations in recent years, and that number is projected to top 50 percent by 2025, according to the Cremation Association of North America.
Though legal in several states, alkaline hydrolysis is not in widespread use.
In Ohio, the only U.S. funeral facility to use the procedure has ended up in a legal battle with state regulators.
Ohio's Board of Embalmers and Funeral Directors doesn't consider the process to be legal under state law, a decision that blocked the facility, Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus, from using it.
The facility and its funeral director, Jeff Edwards, have responded with a lawsuit. Meanwhile, the Ohio Funeral Directors Association decided it was time to pursue legislative changes to legalize alkaline hydrolysis in Ohio.
"Jeff Edwards should be given a medal for actually finally breaking the ice and putting one of these in commercial service," said Joe Wilson, principal owner of Bio-Response Solutions, the Pittsboro, Ind.-based biowaste treatment system manufacturer that designed the metal cylinder Edwards uses. "Everybody has been talking about it for years."
Edwards said the machine sells for around $149,000, about double the initial cost of new equipment for traditional cremation. His total expense for alkaline hydrolysis for one body is about one-fourth the cost of a cremation. He installed the machine in January and was charging families the same price for both methods.
Edwards had used the process 19 times, including on Hal Shimp, whose family insists it was one of the many options they were given, not something pushed on them.
As Edwards views it, alkaline hydrolysis simply accelerates natural decomposition, shrinking decades into hours. For the squeamish or those who find it tough to understand, he compares it to digestion of a meal.
"Yes, it does go down the drain, but it doesn't mean someone is standing there behind the machine flushing," he said.
Disposal of the liquid is a key concern for regulators, who must determine whether it can be processed by water treatment facilities under their health and environmental guidelines. Proponents argue that it's sterile and safe.
One of the first cities to face the issue was St. Petersburg, Fla., where the Anderson-McQueen Funeral Home hopes to have a high-pressure alkaline hydrolysis system operating this summer. Last year, the city found funeral officials could dilute the liquid to make it more acceptable for discharge, public works administrator Michael Connors said.
The process also has raised religious concerns. Alkaline hydrolysis was allowed in New Hampshire for a few years, but the state banned it in 2008 amid opposition from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester, which argued it "is undignified and disrespectful at the most basic level."
Even if alkaline hydrolysis were it to be commonly available and legal, the industry can't predict how many people would choose it.
The answer is at least a few, if Hal Shimp's loved ones are any indication.
Guests at a party to celebrate his life shared memories, grabbed bags of his favorite nuts and read alkaline hydrolysis information set out by his relatives.
People, they discovered, were quite intrigued.
Read more: http://www.gazette.com/articles/bodies-119136-states-columbus.html#ixzz1fLZomzya
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Lafayette company's goal: Greener handling of the dead with Coffin Spa
CycledLife focuses on alkaline hydrolysis for body disposition
Posted: 05/22/2011 03:58:13 PM MDT
{originally published 4/13/2011}
Dying is a dirty business. One Lafayette entrepreneur is looking to clean it up.
Ed Gazvoda wants to use a process called alkaline hydrolysis to reduce a corpse to a bag of bone powder and a barrel of gray water.
The 51-year-old “serial entrepreneur” started a company called CycledLife out of the basement of his Waneka Lake home a couple of years ago to develop a way of making the disposition of human remains environmentally friendly.
His invention, the Coffin Spa, is being designed by Lafayette’s API Engineering LLC. It is slated to hit the market sometime this summer.
Gazvoda argues that alkaline hydrolysis mimics natural decomposition — albeit compressed into hours rather than weeks or months. It works by breaking down proteins and destroying DNA and leaving behind nothing but harmless pathogen-free byproducts clean enough to fertilize pasture land or a farmer’s field.
The process has been around for nearly two decades, but has mostly been used to decompose animal carcasses and donated human cadavers. CycledLife for the first time brings the procedure to the nation’s funeral homes.
In the Coffin Spa, a body is submerged in an alkaline/water mixture that is pumped through the “coffin” and heated to 200 degrees. After six to eight hours, the corpse is reduced to liquid and a small pile of bone residue.
The advantages of liquefaction over cremation or burial, Gazvoda claims, are numerous.
“With cremation, you get back about 5 percent of the body,” he said, pulling up a YouTube video of a crematory on his laptop. “Where did the rest of it go? It got spewed out of a smokestack.”
That means the release of nitrogen oxide, hydrogen chloride, sulfur dioxide and dioxins. Worse, Gazvoda said, mercury from dental fillings vaporizes and goes into the atmosphere. And crematories aren’t typically equipped with pollutants scrubbers.
“If a crematory were a power plant, people would be up in arms,” Gazvoda said.
With burials, he said, bodies filled with medications and pathogens act as sources of groundwater contamination.
“They are full of pills, full of embalming fluid, full of prions,” he said.
During alkaline hydrolysis, medical devices, mercury fillings and other contaminants can easily be removed after the fact and disposed of properly, Gazvoda said.
“I think cremation is dead — it will be dead in five to 10 years,” he said.
Arlen Brown, president of the Colorado Funeral Directors Association, said breaking down bodies with alkaline is the wave of the future, but he said much needs to be accomplished on the regulatory and technological side before the practice will be given the same legitimacy as existing methods.
“There’s going to be a permitting issue on getting this done,” he said.
The hurdles for alkaline hydrolysis became clear earlier this year in Ohio, where Gazvoda sold a precursor model of the Coffin Spa to a funeral director there.
Jeff Edwards, owner of Edwards Funeral Service in Columbus, Ohio, used Gazvoda’s device to process corpses from January through March before state officials told him that liquefying bodies was not an approved method of disposition and ordered him to stop.
He sued the state, and a hearing on a preliminary injunction is scheduled for April 20.
Edwards said of 19 families that he presented with a choice between cremation and alkaline hydrolysis, all picked the latter method for disposition of their loved ones.
“If you can choose an option that is the exact same that Mother Nature would do anyway, that’s what people will choose,” he said. “I believe that it’s the beginning of the end for cremation."
But Gazvoda, who is trying to land $1.5 million in funding for CycledLife, said he will first have to do battle with those in the industry who aren't ready for something new and with regulators who don’t understand alkaline hydrolysis.
“The industry has no incentive to change until customers demand it,” Gazvoda said.
Alkaline hydrolysis advocates got a boost earlier this year when the Colorado Legislature passed a bill that makes “chemical methods” an accepted form of body disposition in the state. The measure, HB 1178, awaits the governor’s signature.
But Gazvoda is hedging his bets by branching out into the pet sector, in which there are fewer restrictions and rules.
He has plans to build an even larger container than the Coffin Spa, in which multiple animal remains could be liquefied simultaneously, but kept separate from one another. Pet owners would be given bone residue from their animals instead of ashes as a keepsake.
Boulder resident Kari Alexander has plans to start up a green-focused pet disposition business called Eco-Pet Service. She placed an order for an alkaline hydrolysis device from CycledLife.
She said she has already identified a Boulder County landowner who wants to use the gray water that will be generated in the decomposition process to enrich his pastureland. That should give comfort to environmentally conscious pet owners who don’t want to contribute to global warming by cremating their dogs and cats, Alexander said.
“I think it would be a great way to pay tribute to a pet’s life by returning their bodies to the earth,” she said.
(editor's note: Gazvoda is a Slovenian surname, with a strong presence in Colorado/Colorado Springs, as well as direct links to cycling/triathlons/athletics)
Just for good measure, I'm including this video on promession -
call me crazy, but I much prefer this method to resomation.
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