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It's not an acid bath. It's an alkaline bath:
When it comes to putting loved ones in their final resting places, our choice has long been whether to bury a body or cremate it. But a third option has been gaining attention recently: Alkaline hydrolysis, which involves dissolving a body in a liquid solution. The process leaves behind bones that can be ground into ash using much less energy than cremation. Though it sounds a bit gruesome, the approach offers many benefits. "This by far is the most environmentally friendly choice" Dean Fisher, director of the Donated Body Program at UCLA told Wired.
[...] Having a body cremated may seem like a sustainable burial, but in most cases it's not great for the environment. In cremation, everything is burned into ash, including bone and medical implants. That can lead to the release of harmful pollutants. In the UK, for instance, cremation contributes to 16% of all mercury pollution. And as The Atlantic has reported, cremation takes about two SUV-tanks worth of gas to cremate a single body. Alkaline hydrolysis, on the other hand, requires only an eighth of that energy, Gizmodo reports.
Also at Here & Now (4:45 audio).
California: AB-967 Human remains disposal: alkaline hydrolysis: licensure and regulation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @08:30PM (3 children)
There seem to be two polluting issues at play here, mercury and fossil fuel byproducts. The mercury issue can be resolved by pulling out the fillings prior to cremation, which can be done with just a pair of pliers. For other medical implants you can be equally invasive, just require a list of implants to be removed from a body and it can easily be done.
As for fossil fuel usage goes, 2 tanks of gas is insignificant compared to any number of lower hanging fruit. We're already dealing with fossil fuel use on a systemic level, there isn't any need to focus on crematories that are a minimal part of modern day life.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @09:26PM
Options includ
Cutting out by humans: then you need a new, stigmatized position "implant remover" with many of the skills but none of the pay or prestige of autopsies.
Cutting out by robots: harvesting machine parts from the fleshlings, yes, that will go well..
Cutting out by strong magnetic forces: requires magnetic/field-magnetizeable implants.
(Score: 2, Informative) by tftp on Saturday August 26 2017, @10:02PM (1 child)
Modern fillings are not amalgam-based [toxicteeth.org]. I do not even recall when I had a tooth patched up with amalgam. Today it's composite. You can tell by the fact that it is light-cured [wikipedia.org]. As fillings don't last for the lifetime, by now most of the old, mercury-based ones are probably gone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @02:50AM
I agree with you that mercury fillings are largely a thing of the past.
It's pretty much old people getting cremated with their olde style fillings that contribute the mercury, and maybe middle aged guys like me who die young. But yeah, fillings in advanced countries haven't been mercury for at least 15 years, so it's a "temporary" problem. (Too bad the composite fillings don't last as long usually.)
That still leaves the problem of other implants in the body when incinerated. I wonder what the breakdown products of burnt silicone tits are...