BALTIMORE – It’s almost like a washing machine, if you ask Joseph H. Brown. The coffin-shaped metal tank at Brown’s crematorium in West Baltimore uses hot water, chemicals and a little agitation to dissolve human remains, leaving only bone.
The practice, formally known as alkaline hydrolysis, was legalized at this year’s General Assembly. But the State Board of Morticians and Funeral Directors is still writing the regulations that will govern the practice in Maryland, according to its director. There is a law on the books, but no regulations, which can leave a legal gray area for carrying out the procedure.
Brown, who installed his system in April, said he has water cremation covered. He believes he is the first to do this in the state. He charges $5,000 for it, compared to $1,700 for a traditional flame cremation.
“My mother, who is 94 years old, she says—just kidding—“Why would anyone pay more for alkaline hydrolysis?” “” Brown said. “Let me answer that for you: Some people drive a Mercedes and some people drive a Pinto.”
For his part, Brown insists he is following the law, which went into effect in October. On Thursday, standing alongside Baltimore City Councilman Mark Conway, he invited reporters to a news conference at the Funeral Home, located in Mondawmin, south of Druid Hill Park.
‘I’m a certified mortar. I’ve done thousands of cremations. Now I just do it a different way,” he said. “Does the board have a problem with me doing it? Well, they want me to wait for regulations. “
Brown joked that if authorities come to arrest him for this, he should “make sure I have a nice suit.” Media coverage can only bring more attention to water cremation, he said.
“The publicity is working,” he said.
Erika Malone, executive director of the board, said the regulations have yet to be released and there is no set timeline, but declined to comment further. The Maryland Department of Health, the parent agency for the board, did not immediately provide a comment Friday afternoon.
A growing consumer base
Brown’s equipment uses water, ethanol and alkaline chemicals to decompose a body in about three hours, tilting it back and forth to agitate the solution, the way a washing machine cleans clothes, he said.
Brown said he spent nearly $1 million on the water cremation equipment, which also includes a tank where the water’s pH is lowered from 14 to 12.5 before it is released into the Baltimore City sewer system and sent to the back for treatment river wastewater treatment plant .
He has received a permit from the city to do so, Jennifer Combs, spokesperson for the city’s Department of Public Works, said in an email.
According to the Cremation Association of North America, the remaining water is considered sterile and contains salts, sugars, amino acids and peptides. There is no tissue or DNA left after the process is complete.
After the process, the bone fragments are dried for several days before they can be reduced to an ash-like substance, which can be placed in an urn like other cremated remains. The water cremation process actually produces a higher volume of remains than fire cremation because less material is lost to the surrounding air, Brown said.
Brown declined to say when his funeral home, a family-owned business he calls the oldest African-American funeral home in Maryland, completed its first water cremation, or how many have been completed, saying he did not want to give authorities “ammunition.”
‘I don’t do anything illegal. I’m doing something that’s different,” Brown said. “Some people may object to it, but I feel like there is a growing base of consumers who will stand up for me in providing this service to the state of Maryland – and nothing is going to fly.”
A lower ecological footprint
Brown praised the process as a greener option for Death Care. For example, during a water cremation, the liquid is heated to about 140 degrees Fahrenheit, cooler than boiling.
During a fire cremation, the temperature reaches more than 1,000 degrees, requiring a lot of fuel. Brown Funeral Home uses propane, which has a lower carbon footprint than other fuels such as natural gas. But for water cremation, the funeral home uses an electric boiler, which bypasses the need for fossil fuels altogether.
At least one traditional crematorium proposal, from Vaughn Greene Funeral Services in North Baltimore, has drawn criticism in Baltimore, in part because of neighbors’ concerns about air emissions from burning.
Conway, who represents the city’s Fourth District, proposed a bill in October that would further limit the zoning districts in which crematoria can operate.
“Our proposed rezoning is not an opposition to funeral homes or alternatives to sustainable death care,” Conway said in a news release. “However, we are against the installation of a human waste incinerator within such close proximity to our schools, homes and families. Aquamation offers an environmentally friendly choice, and today we stand to support it. ”
Some mourners consider the water cremation process to be gentler on the body, making it more beneficial, Brown said.
“Some people prefer water for shooting,” Brown said. “Water is so spiritual.”
But not everyone is confident this trend will last, just as cremation, once unpopular, has grown to account for about 60% of the death care industry in the United States.
Jack Mitchell, a former president of the National Funeral Directors Association, said he believes natural organic reduction, in which a body is broken down in the ground, could stick instead. The procedure was legalized in Maryland at the same time as alkaline hydrolysis.
“It’s even more environmentally friendly than alkaline hydrolysis, and it’s not icky,” said Jack Mitchell, who is also president of the Mitchell-Wiedefeld Funeral Home in Towson. “People like the idea that the soil that is the end result, which is the mother’s remains or grandma’s remains, you can then use it in the garden.”
“When you see those flowers growing, you can say, ‘That’s mom,’” Mitchell said.
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