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Washington Could Become the First State to Compost the Dead

posted by martyb on Friday January 04 2019, @04:41AM   Printer-friendly
from the circle-of-life dept.

canopic jug writes:

With an upcoming bill, Washington state might be able to start composting dead people. The bill aims to legalize composting human remains and the heat generated by natural microbes should bring the pile up to 55°C for 72 hours, which is hot enough to kill key pathogens.

The method is called “recomposting” and claims to be cheaper and more environmentally friendly than traditional burial or cremation. It involves rapidly decomposing a body and converting the remains into soil. That nutrient-rich material can then be used to grow trees, flowers, and other new life.

The alternative practice hinges on a bill that state senator Jamie Pedersen plans to introduce next month, according to NBC. It would legalize recomposting in Washington where burial and cremation are currently the only acceptable ways to dispose of human remains.

Composting was prominent in the Larry Niven / Jerry Pournelle science fiction novel, Footfall. However, the discussion in Washington was initiated by Katrina Spade in 2013 while working on her master’s in architecture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by exaeta on Friday January 04 2019, @04:57PM (6 children)

    by exaeta (6957) on Friday January 04 2019, @04:57PM (#782106) Homepage Journal
    The problem is twofold. First, prions generally aren't destroyed by cooking at 55C, and may or may not be destroyed by microbial processes. Because of the nature of prions, they wont be destroyed at 55C no matter how long you cook them. Putting infectious prions in soil is probably a bad idea. They are a lot more stable than viruses and have an effectively indefinite lifespan unless something destroys them. Whilst a living person with a prion infection isn't very contagious, the brain and spinal tissue is VERY contagious. Prions are considered so dangerous and hard to sanitize that after surgeons operate on patients infected with prions the tools are quarantined, permanently. The tools cannot be sterilized to a degree of sufficient confidence. Unlike bacteria or viruses, prions do not "die" over time, and last indefinitely until a chemical reaction destroys them. There are also no known prion infection cures, and all types known to infect humans are invariably fatal with 100% fatality rate. It also takes years for the prion infection to actually kill you, so we wont notice until a lot of people are dead. Somehow I think that chopping up brains and nervous system tissue that might be infected, and then growing plants in it, might be a bad idea. Especially if those plants are intended to produce food for human consumption.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:44PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @05:44PM (#782130)

    It sounds as if the entire human population should have been destroyed by these indestructible prions a long time ago.

    Remember Cruetzfeld-Jacob rampaging through the UK? Supposed to happen by now. Anyone still alive over there?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @10:06PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @10:06PM (#782254)

      It sounds as if the entire human population should have been destroyed by these indestructible prions a long time ago [if this is true].

      The tradeoff of their design is that survive-ability is gained at the expense of spread-ability. If they evolve to spread more easily, they have to increase complexity, making them easier to destroy by natural and biological means. You pretty much have to eat a relatively large quantity of of them directly to get "infected".

      We probably consume a couple of prions every day, and those few get into our system and screw up a hundred or so cells over time. The body can absorb such damage.

      If they grew in complexity to toggle these trade-offs, essentially they'd be turning themselves into viruses or bacterium-like microbes.

      • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Friday January 04 2019, @10:27PM

        by exaeta (6957) on Friday January 04 2019, @10:27PM (#782264) Homepage Journal
        Prions don't evolve, actually, which is their main saving grace and why they haven't wiped out humanity.
        --
        The Government is a Bird

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by exaeta on Friday January 04 2019, @10:39PM

        by exaeta (6957) on Friday January 04 2019, @10:39PM (#782269) Homepage Journal
        To clarify. Prions don't contain DNA or other form of genetic code, therefore cannot mutate, and cannot evolve. A prion is basically an enzyme that converts a useful protein in the body into... itself. It's actually sort of a genetic defect of the host genome that allows a misfolded protein that can cause other proteins to misfold in the same way, setting off a chain reaction. When the protein is performing a life essential function, the prion will eventually convert all the normal form into the misfolded prion form which doesn't perform the purpose of the correctly folded form. Eventually the organism dies because there is a deficiency of the important protein, or the prion causes structural issues in the host. Unfortunately, the immune system can't readily identify prions since they are just misfolded variants of a critical protein. Nearly all antigen binding sites would be shared in common with the normal form. Because the immune system has no response to prions, a single one can cause an infection that kills you. We do not encounter them on a regular basis (we'd be dead).
        --
        The Government is a Bird

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 04 2019, @09:22PM (#782240)

    So use human-compost to plant trees or non-edible plants, just like with most other waste products that can carry infectious material...

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @11:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 05 2019, @11:28AM (#782472)

      How many humans will strictly follow warning like "do not use for edible plants" ?
      Also, pets do eat lawn grass and earthworms.

      Another consideration is, dead human body tends to be filled with medicines and other chemicals that survive composting and should not be released into the environment.