From
mafia propaganda to moral outcry, what's stopping us from embracing water
cremation technology?
When you die, your body is going to
decompose.
It starts from the moment you pass. Your organs
begin to shut down. Hair stops growing, skin recedes. Some parts of the body
take longer than others, but eventually, as with all things, it all starts to
break down.
If you opt for a traditional burial,
your remains will spend years nestled within a casket underground, progressing
into a deeper state of decomposition. If you opt for a traditional flame-based
cremation, you eliminate any further decomposition by burning it to a halt.
But there's also another alternative -- one
designed to accelerate the decomposition process through the medium of water.
It's known as alkaline hydrolysis, or water cremation. One part spa, one part
chemical blend, a few hours of a swirling soak, and your earthly remains are no
longer.
"It's basic chemistry," explains Anas
Ghadouani, leader of the research group Aquatic Ecology and Ecosystem Studies.
"You have organic matter and you add a base to it and it just decomposes.
You can write the equation to it. It's very simple."
Despite this, alkaline hydrolysis remains one of
the most divisive and misunderstood practices in contemporary funeral
technology.
The machine
Alkaline hydrolysis is a form of cremation that
uses water and chemicals to break down the human body to its bare minimum.
Salts, amino acids, peptides. Like flame-based cremation, it produces ash that
can be taken home. Unlike flame-based cremation, it's illegal for use on human
bodies in almost 30 states in America.
The concept itself isn't new. Amos Herbert
Hobson of Middlesex, England, patented the first alkaline hydrolysis machine
all the way back in 1888. He used it to dispose of animal carcasses.
In the century and a half since, the technology
has evolved, and it has the potential to shake up the death industry.
The process is straightforward. Bodies are
placed in a machine containing a chemical mixture of water and alkali. The
mixture is then heated and cycled. Over the course of hours, the body is
accelerated through its natural decomposition process, resulting in a residual
liquid made up of amino acids, peptides, salt, soap and bones -- the last of which
is broken down into white ash.
I was stunned that there was a way to dispose of
tissue without burning.
Joseph Wilson
Joseph Wilson, now founder and CEO of leading
alkaline hydrolysis manufacturer Bio-Response Solutions, helped design the
first commercial-use human alkaline hydrolysis unit in 2005.
"I was stunned that there was a way to
dispose of tissue without burning," said Wilson. "You don't have any
external pumps or tanks or chemicals. It's all there at the machine."
There are undeniable benefits to this process.
In 2011, a study from the University of Groningen compared conventional burial,
cremation, alkaline hydrolysis and cryomation and found that alkaline
hydrolysis had the lowest overall environmental footprint.
Yet despite the fact that flame-based cremation
subjects the remains to intense fire, alkaline hydrolysis is seen as the more
graphic option for potential funerals, when both are just as valid. Legal
roadblocks and cultural concerns have plagued water cremation since its
inception.
And there's a simple reason for that: Alkaline
hydrolysis has a reputation shaped by years of misrepresentation. Nobody wants
to feel like they're disrespecting their loved ones.
Media, morals and the mafia
Most people's first experience of alkaline
hydrolysis is through popular culture.
In the second episode of Breaking Bad, audiences
sees drug dealer Jesse Pinkman dissolve a dead body in his apartment's bathtub
using hydrofluoric acid he'd sourced from his high school's chemical stores. He
returns the next day only to find the acid had eaten through the bathtub itself
and floorboards beneath, before finally falling through to the floor below.
Despite the effective cinematics, Breaking Bad
is far from realistic. Hydrofluoric acid, while highly corrosive, doesn't have
the capacity to completely liquefy remains overnight -- it's at the wrong end
of the pH scale. It certainly doesn't have the capacity to eat through a bath
and the floor.
Whether it's a question of gulping down Soylent
Green or shunting bodies into acid barrels, television and film haven't been
kind to the practice of alkaline hydrolysis.
Outside of television, urban legends have tarred
alkaline hydrolysis with further negativity. In 2011, researchers had to debunk claims the
Sicilian mafia disposed of human remains in a process called lupara bianca, or
white shotgun. Just like in Breaking Bad, the mafia supposedly used acid -- an
entirely different, cruder chemical process.
Mafia urban legends and shows like Breaking Bad
create a sense of violence surrounding water cremation that simply doesn't hold
up. Water cremation, at its core, is no more than the acceleration of a natural
process.
The reality: As with almost all aspects of the
death industry, there is a level of respect and dignity. You don't see what
happens in the retort of a flame-based cremator, but you won't see what happens
inside an alkaline hydrolysis machine either.
Waste not
What remains to be dealt with, however, is what
comes out the other side. Ashes are one thing -- you can pop them on the mantle
in a decorative urn, sprinkle them at sea or even have them launched into
space -- but what about the residual liquid?
One of the biggest roadblocks to the acceptance
of alkaline hydrolysis technology is the issue of wastewater. Because of its
association with death, the liquid is perceived as too unsanitary to be
processed normally. Say it goes through the same recycling plants that supply
residential areas, the idea of drinking the essence of a dead body sounds
abhorrent. It's hard enough swallowing the idea of recycled sewage water.
Remains? Inconceivable.
But technology already exists to tackle almost
any kind of wastewater.
Sewage water is filtered for reuse in municipal
treatment plants. Organic material is broken down in anaerobic digesters, which
convert the material into methane or "biogas." Specially designed
ultrafiltration systems can even tackle aqueous nuclear waste.
"Any liquid waste that we have, we can deal
with," says Ghadouani.
Yet in Australia, residual liquid from water
cremation isn't permitted to be treated via the municipal water treatment
facilities or digesters. More worryingly, there's a disconnect here -- and it's
one that, for the most part, is behind the closed doors of the funeral
industry.
"One of the most common things the public
doesn't know," says leading US thanatologist and death educator Cole Imperi, "is that when someone is
embalmed, all the blood that comes out of your body, where does that go? It
goes down the drain."
Why are you discriminating against one particular
disposition method?
Cole Imperi
In fact, almost all the human waste that comes
from hospitals and funeral homes as a result of the embalming process is
permitted to be processed through these official channels.
"So if you're allowing byproducts from
funeral homes to go into the municipal water system for treatment, why are you
discriminating against one particular disposition method?" Imperi asks.
"It's an interesting kind of cognitive dissonance."
Nevertheless, in the few states that allow
alkaline hydrolysis -- for animals -- practicing venues must provide their own
wastewater filtration treatments and submit them for regular testing. It's
expensive and demanding. Venues are scarce.
Jonathan Hopkins, owner and operator of Resting Pets Cremations in New South
Wales, Australia, is an alkaline hydrolysis advocate. He and his late wife
opened their practice after the pain of a family pet's death opened their eyes
to the process as a cremation alternative.
"My wife was always an animal lover and she
just had a really bad experience with the [cremation] company that was serving
this area," he said. "So we approached the local council for a pet
cremation system." They landed on alkaline hydrolysis.
To ensure the wastewater passed council and
environmental regulations, Hopkins created his own treatment system. He began
by increasing the machine's existing filtration capacity, with any overflow
going into a separate tank. Here, microorganisms remove any remaining bacteria
-- much like a septic system.
"With our system, they can see what
chemicals are going in, and they can see the effluent coming out. They can test
it, they know where it's going," he said.
Reframing the narrative
Some will always struggle with the concept of
alkaline hydrolysis. Certain cultures or religions might always register a
stronger connection to conventional burial and cremation methods.
But our human instinct to process death isn't
incompatible with water cremation. We could use residual liquid from the
hydrolysis process to help nurture the earth. A gardener, for example, could
live on in the plants and flowers they once nurtured.
Conceptually, it's not out of the question.
"If the liquid waste stream were to be applied to soil as a fertilizer,
there could be a role for this as a soil improver." explains Michael
Short, a senior research fellow of the Future Industries Institute at the
University of South Australia.
On a larger scale, this could even benefit the
wider agricultural industry.
"The wastewater stream [would be] a
relatively high strength organic waste solution," Short says. "Soils
in some Australian regions are generally low in natural organic matter, so
adding organics from such waste streams could help to improve overall soil
quality and soil carbon stocks."
It may sound strange on first pass, but why not?
If it gives someone peace of mind that our loved ones will "live on,"
the transmutation of alkaline hydrolysis liquid to fertilizer may just be the
PR dream the technology has been waiting for.
Alkaline hydrolysis may not be accepted anytime
soon. It may take years of building up a more positive association. Maybe even
decades.
It all comes down to whether states and
countries are willing to test the waters.
https://www.cnet.com/features/the-misunderstood-funeral-tech-thats-illegal-in-30-states/
