You read about alkaline hydrolysis in In Touch back in 2010 and several times since, as previous

legislative attempts failed to legalize it. Third time is the charm it seems. AB 967, allowing alkaline hydrolysis as an option for disposition of human remains, has finally passed both houses of the California legislature. After the governor’s

signature it will go into effect July 1, 2020. This bill would allow and regulate the disposition of human remains by a water process called alkaline hydrolysis, and also known as “water cremation,”

“aquamation,” “bio-cremation,” and “resomation.”

Alkaline hydrolysis is a process whereby a high pH (alkaline) solution is used to dissolve the soft parts of the body, leaving behind only bones, which will

be crushed and returned to the family in the same way as cremation ashes. The liquid is sent to a water treatment plant or to a facility where it can

be used to generate energy.

The main value of this piece of legislation is that it provides an additional option for dealing with human remains—one that should be less expensive than burial and less environmentally damaging

than cremation, while costing consumers about the same as cremation, which is already much less

expensive than burial.

Getting Ready

There is much to be done before alkaline hydrolysis (hereinafter “AH”) will actually be available in

California. The lengthy lead time before the law goes into effect on July 1, 2020 will be necessary to allow entities the time to acquire the machines or “systems” that perform the AH process and to get the plumbing, permits, licenses, and training

necessary to be able to operate the machines and the new businesses. The lead time will also be useful

to educate people about the new option.

Few members of the public have ever heard of alkaline hydrolysis. (Think how well-informed you are as a regular reader of InTouch!) Most people give little thought to what happens to their bodies when they are done with them. Even fewer consider

the environmental implications of their choices on

that subject, or, if they do, they think that cremation is

a good environmental choice.

One would expect funeral service providers to be well-informed on new directions in their field, but in a cursory survey of about a dozen local funeral homes

and cremation providers, it was discovered that some funeral homes knew little or nothing of the new law, though most would happily work with any entity that provided AH if their clients requested it. One major cremation provider knew all about AH but was

actively hostile to the idea, citing the fact that the AH process has a significantly longer cycle time than cremation, a factor that would influence his

throughput, and no doubt his bottom line.

While true that the low temperature (and lower-priced) AH machine will take over 14 hours to process one body, there is a higher-temperature version of the AH machine that will do the job in 4-6 hours, which

is not much more than the time necessary to complete a cremation. “High temperature” alkaline hydrolysis is only 300 degrees Fahrenheit, versus 1700 degrees for a cremation. And interestingly, the cost of this higher temperature AH machine is similar to the cost

of a cremation machine.

Environmental Impact

The environmental impacts of conventional burial and of cremation are concerns that grow right along with the growing population. It is for environmental reasons that the BA-FCA has supported legalizing

alkaline hydrolysis. Conventional burial represents extensive use of metals, woods, concrete, chemicals and land. Cremation uses fossil fuels (usually natural gas) to turn a body into air pollution. Direct air pollution from cremation includes carbon monoxide,

nitrous oxides, sulfur oxides, dioxin, hydrogen chloride, hydrogen fluoride, and, most notably, mercury from dental amalgams. When mercury is burned it is distributed into the air as tiny particles. Particulate mercury when inhaled causes neurological

damage, especially in children. Alkaline hydrolysis as a water process vents nothing to the air. Dental amalgams and other metals in the body do not dissolve but remain intact and can be reclaimed and recycled at the end of the process. And because AH

machines use electricity instead of natural gas, the electricity can be sourced from renewables or carbon free sources, making the process even more

environmentally benign.

Alkaline hydrolysis machines do use a fair amount of water, about 285 gallons or four bathtubs-worth per

A New Option for Disposition of Remains (Warning: graphic biological descriptions)

F ALL 2017 I s s ue

463 Co l l e ge A ve nue

P .O . B o x 60448

Pa lo A l to , CA 94306

(650 ) 3 21 -21 09

In Touch B a y A r e a F u n e r a l C o n s u m e r s A s s o c i a t i o n

w w w. b a - f c a . o r g

I n s i de th i s i s sue :

A New Option for Disposition of

Remains

1

Green Burial on the Peninsula

is Not Dead

2

Opting-In or Opting-Out of

Organ Donation

2

Tributes 2

Coffin Clubs and Coffin

Furniture

3

Article continuations 3

Smile! 4

News You Can Use 4

MEMBERS: Update your Info Do you have a new address? A new phone number? Have you given us your next-of-kin information? Your

date of birth? Have you decided or changed your mind about the mortuary you want to use? WE NEED TO KNOW! And we especially need a good email

address for you. Send an email to office@ba-fca.org with your updated info. Or go online to www.ba-fca.org/MemUpdateForm.html. Or use your

remit envelope or call us or send the info via US Mail. We accept all

forms of communication!

BA-FCA Outreach in 12

Months

- Exhibited at 4 Senior Fairs

- Gave 7 programs to groups

- Attended 18 Senior Roundtables

Everyone wants to save the world; nobody wants to help

Mom do the dishes. ~ P. J. O’Rourke ~

(Alkaline hydrolysis continued on page 3)

In Touch P a g e 2

In Memory of:

David Bortin, from Beverly Bortin

David Dahl, from Howard Brady

Ruth I. Gordon, from Victoria Marugg

Alice and Warren Miller, from Nancy Miller

Margaret Miller, from Helen Rezendes

Susanna Wallace, from Donald Wallace

In Honor of:

Herbert J. Bollinger, from Paul Matzner

With thanks to these donors Each year our organization receives gifts made to honor respected individuals or in memory of loved ones who are missed. Below are the financial tributes we have acknowledged since the last newsletter:

Green burial eliminates all the toxic and non-biodegradable elements of burial—no metal or polished-wood coffins, no embalming, no concrete or

plastic vaults, no headstones. Bodies are buried in plain wooden or cardboard containers, or cloth shrouds. Graves are marked with a local field stone or a GPS coordinate. Habitat for earth creatures remains

functional and undamaged. Birds sing. Flowers grow. Bees buzz.

The only problem with

green burial is finding a cemetery where you can be buried that way. The lone green burial cemetery in the

Bay Area is Fernwood in Marin County. Previous efforts to get a green cemetery going on the Peninsula

have faltered in the face of zoning restrictions and unclear

land titles.

But Edward Bixby, a

green cemetery owner in New Jersey, aims to change that. He has purchased an old 5-acre pioneer cemetery

near Purissima Creek, a few miles south of Half Moon Bay, and intends to re-open it for green burials. To hear Bixby tell it, there should be no zoning issues around operating an “existing” cemetery, and he is ready to

take orders.

Not so fast, says the San Mateo County Planning Department. A legal non-conforming use permit must be obtained, a plan must be submitted, hearings must be held, and even the sign Bixby has already put up requires a Coastal Permit, which he hasn’t gotten yet. The whole land-use

process could take six months or more, though probably not much more. And there are still State regulatory details around opening and running a

cemetery to be sorted out.

The old Purisima cemetery was covered over with blackberry bramble and poison oak. Buried in the overgrown vegetation, the historic

headstones were toppled and broken. Bixby has begun clearing paths and righting headstones. The newly-cleared

paths mean you can walk around and have a look. The scenic wooded venue has views of the ocean from some prime prospective gravesites.

It should be a nice place to be buried when the paperwork is

done.

Green Burial on the Peninsula Is Not Dead

Organ transplants save thousands of lives a year, yet well over 100,000 people in the United States are waiting for donated organs,

and about 18 of them will die every day while still on the waiting list. Recently France became among the nations that use an “opt-out” system for organ donation in the effort to make more organs available for transplant. An opt-out system is based on presumed consent—you are presumed to be amenable to having your organs harvested unless you

specifically say otherwise—i.e., unless you opt out. In the US, we have an “opt in” arrangement, meaning that we must provide explicit consent

for our organs to be harvested for donation.

A Stanford study (sparq.stanford.edu/solutions/opt-out-policies-increase-organ-donation) notes that in opt-out countries such as Austria,

where the default is that your organs are donated, “more than 90% of people donate their organs” whereas fewer than 15% of people donate in countries where explicit consent is required. The study was mostly around the psychology of how the question is asked and therefore how the effort to donate is perceived. Most people

understand that donating is a good thing, but people who must explicitly consent apparently see the effort as greater and more costly, whereas when donation is the default, people consider donation a trivial act. (Opt out/in continued on page 3)

IN TOUCH is issued twice a year from the offices of Bay Area Funeral

Consumers Association , 463 College Ave., Palo Alto, CA 94306

The Board of Directors and office manager can’t do it all! Please lend a hand to keep our services available. We need another board member,

office volunteers, phoning help and speakers/trainers.

No volunteers = no BA-FCA

Call Margie Bridges for more information, 650-325-2000.

Ocean view from cemetery

Not-yet-legal sign

Opting-In Or Opting-Out of Organ Donation

P a g e 3 F A L L 2 0 1 7

Coffin Clubs and Coffin Furniture

industry is effectively by-passed). So if there is both demand for and

providers of AH, funeral directors will happily arrange it for you.

Educating the public and creating demand will be crucial for helping AH to become widely available in California. Besides the visceral ick factor, there is another perception issue that has been raised by those “toilet-to-tap”

folks in Orange county, the ones who have perfected the process of turning sewage into drinking water but were made to pump the drinkable result into the ground so that it would be “ground water” when retrieved, nevermind that it has to be re-treated when pumped back up. They are concerned that the idea of human remains in the water will further deter

people from accepting their process. Of course, animal remains are already in the water by this very process, and, as pointed out above, the effluent is

exceptionally sterile—vastly more so than the “remains” you normally flush.

Perception is a difficult thing to change. But even if you do not wish to

exercise AH as an option for yourself, or if you strenuously object to “flushing grandma down the drain,” you can appreciate that AH is a rational environmental option in our very populated and polluted world,

and should be legal and available for people to choose.

An interesting new phenomenon is taking off among New Zealand retirees: they are meeting in clubs to build coffins, quite “coming alive” with the fun and camaraderie of the projects. People

build and decorate coffins for themselves and their loved ones, and sometimes when they run out of friends and family to build for, they build coffins for charity or to help other members of the

club.

Coffin kits make the job easier, and kits cost only about $170, which is considerably less than what you will pay at a funeral home, or even at CostCo. The coffins are made from

particleboard, and are either rectangular or shaped like iconic six-sided coffins. They can also be

“disguised” as furniture until the time comes for their trip underground.

A brief Google search turns up no similar activity in the United States, but it is still certainly possible to make your own coffin in this country, or have it made. The Federal

Funeral Rule requires that funeral homes must allow third party caskets without imposing a “handling” fee, so enterprising woodworkers have been creative about customizing caskets. And the idea of dual-

use coffins—coffin as furniture while you are alive, and as a burial container when that time comes—has blossomed as well. One version, shown here, serves as both bookshelf during ones above-ground

years and later as “underground furniture”. A Google search of “coffin furniture” will turn up thousands of links to do-it-yourself coffin-building websites as well as

names of many enterprises that will custom-build coffin/furniture for you.

cycle. This includes the water used to clean the machine after each use.

This could be a concern in water-stressed areas. It should be noted that the water-based effluent of the AH process is quite sterile, meaning nothing is alive in there. The strong alkalinity breaks open cells and causes them to dump their contents, and then further breaks down the proteins, lipids, and nucleic acids into amino acids, sugars, soaps, and electrolytes.

This sterilizing effect is why AH has long been used for disposing of animal carcasses, and is why in the old days, bodies in paupers’ graves

were covered with lye.

Among the regulatory checks specified in the law is that every five years, a test must be done on the AH effluent to determine that pathogens are being adequately destroyed. The irony here is that the flushing of household toilets is not regulated, and yet each flush of the brown stuff

puts literally trillions of pathogens down your unregulated drain.

Demand

The available land for burials is diminishing, and the cost of burial remains high, generally well over $10,000. Because cremation is less expensive, the demand for cremation is increasing. The funeral industry will always urge you to spend as much as possible, but is generally

amenable to providing you with whatever method you choose for dealing with your remains (probably excluding whole body donation in which the

I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom—until they are flashing behind you.

Coffin closed for use underground

Coffin as furniture before use underground

(Alkaline hydrolysis continued from page 1)

(Opt out/in continued from page 2) Counterintuitively, Donate Life California, a donor registry, argues that

changing to an opt-out/presumed consent system may reduce the number of people who actually donate. And they have both logic and data to support their position. See donatelifecalifornia.org/education/faqs/presumed-consent/ . The study notes, for example, that the difference in actual donation rates between opt-out and opt-in countries is statistically

insignificant, because in all cases the families have to consent to the donation even where consent is presumed. They note that in California,

31% of people register as donors on their driver’s licenses, but 72% actually donate when the issue comes up. The fear is that is if young

uninformed people opt out when applying for licenses, there will be little opportunity to revisit the matter and undo the “No.” Another issue to ponder is “if there are any models in law where the state opts to take possession of the belongings of an individual for the public good, over their possible objections.” The legal trend in the area of health care has

been to allow people to make their own informed decisions. It is all still under discussion, so expect more to follow.

Be a BA-FCA Hero!

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PERMIT NO. 12

News You Can Use could cure a variety of skin

ailments, including swellings, goiters,

scrofula, and boils. This belief drew

many people to attend the

executions in hopes of a cure.

theconversation.com/nine-weird-

and-wonderful-facts-about-death-

and-funeral-practices-70465.

~~~~~

Free Funeral Planning with

Purchase. For those of you who

would like a green burial, the

makers of the Infinity Burial Suit and

Infinity Burial Shroud (both

~$1500) are now offering free

funeral planning assistance. Busy

people can get a 2-hour, one-on-

one consultation by phone or video

chat. For those earlier in the

planning process, there is a one

hour/week video chat for 4 weeks

after which you will have a

comprehensive plan. Coeio’s

mushroom-infused burial goods help

to detoxify bodies so that the

hundreds of toxins in and on the

human body (from medications,

pollution, pesticides, skin creams,

etc.) do not just end up polluting the

soil and ground water, helping to

keep green burial the low-

environmental impact activity that it

is intended to be. See coeio.com/

infinity-burial-suit-2/.

Appellate court upholds

Nebraska’s Funeral Picketing Law

(NFPL). In Phelps-Roper v. Ricketts,

(8th Cir., Aug. 11, 2017), the U.S.

8th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld

Nebraska's Funeral Picketing Law

against challenges brought by

members of the Westboro Baptist

Church, which routinely pickets

military funerals to protest “military

pep rallies” because they suggest

that God approves of national

policies, such as gay marriage,

which the WBC considers against

biblical teachings. The appeals

court found that public expressions

of belief are protected by the First

Amendment, but are not absolute,

and that mourners in their

vulnerable emotional condition

“have a privacy right not to be

intruded upon….” Full text of

decision at media.ca8.uscourts.gov/

opndir/17/08/161902P.pdf

~~~~~

Can you be buried in your back

yard? In California, the answer is a

firm No. However, there is a

loophole, as pointed out by Cecil

Adams (accurately but with tongue

firmly in cheek) in The Straight

Dope (www.straightdope.com/

columns/read/2573/can-a-person-

be-buried-in-the-backyard). While

California law prohibits whole-

body human burial anywhere

except in a cemetery, one

definition of cemetery in the law is

“a place where six or more human

bodies are buried.” Adams opines

that “A construction like that invites

enterprise. I suggest nothing; I

merely point out that the state is

going to be looking for six bodies.

How they get there is up to you.”

BA-FCA politely suggests that you

use an established cemetery for

body burials, or choose one of the

other legal methods for dealing

with human remains.

~~~~~

Strange Historical Funeral

Practices. During the medieval

period, many people would use the

same coffin. Churches had coffins to

borrow or rent. These were used

merely to carry the deceased

person from their home, or

wherever they died, to the

churchyard, at which point the

bodies were taken from the coffin

and buried in a cloth shroud. The

coffin could then be rented again,

no doubt bringing a little money

into the church coffers. Later, in

eighteenth and nineteenth century

England, ending only with the

abolition of public executions in

1868, it was thought that the touch

of a freshly hanged man’s hand

You know that you can get about anything you want through Amazon.com, but did

you also know that Amazon will support your favorite non-profit every time you make a purchase? And at no extra cost to you! It is called

Amazon Smile.

You just log in to your Amazon account through Smile.Amazon.com/ch/94-3402027, and a portion of

whatever you spend will be donated to BA-FCA! We have a direct link to Amazon Smile on our homepage (www.ba-fca.org). Be sure to

bookmark it! Anything you can get through Amazon.com is available through Amazon Smile. So now when you make a purchase, your

money will go farther than ever!

Bay Ar ea F uner a l Cons umers Ass o c ia t i on

463 College Avenue

P.O. Box 60448

Palo Alto, CA 94306

Phone: 650-321-2109

Visit us on the web! www.ba-fca.org

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SMILE!

Before I Go,You Should Know—This $15 booklet contains useful forms (powers of attorney, advance directives, etc) and lots more! Order by emailing office@ba-fca.org or calling 650-321-2109.