British Columbia

Canadian man pushes for water cremation in British Columbia

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An alternative human burial method, known as alkaline hydrolysis or ‘water cremation,’ has started to gain traction in recent years, in the US

Fire cremation

Fire cremation

In order to meet net-zero targets and tackle human-induced emissions, an individual named Stuart Westie from Williams Lake in British Columbia, Canada, is pushing for change in the province to permit alkaline hydrolysis as an alternative to cremation.

Water cremation, also known as alkaline hydrolysis, is a process that uses a robust alkaline solution to dissolve organic materials, leaving behind bones and other non-organic remains.

Water cremation is akin to using soap

It’s akin to using soap that breaks down dirt, but on a larger scale and with certain chemicals and temperatures.

Currently, this type of cremation is legal only in Canadian locations: Saskatchewan, Ontario, Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Northwest Territories.

This type of cremation is considered sustainable because it releases fewer carbon emissions, uses less energy, allows for chemical recycling, and produces minimal air pollution compared to traditional cremation methods.

“The body is put into a machine. They use normal city water, add a chemical like potassium chloride – turn the heat up to 150 degrees, and in five hours, you are no more,” explained Westie to The Williams Lake Tribute.

“The bones that are left can be crunched up and put in an urn – also, all of your fillings are still there – any hip replacements remain, etc.”

During the meeting on January 16, the council voted to propose a resolution advocating for changes to the law to allow alkaline hydrolysis as an alternative to traditional cremation. 

They also decided to collaborate with the Cariboo Regional District on the same issue, as Westie intended to present the proposal at their board meeting on February 8. 

Environmental benefits of alkaline hydrolysis

Westie emphasized the environmental benefits of alkaline hydrolysis compared to flame-based cremation, citing its significantly lower carbon emissions.

Based on the 2023 Annual Report from CANA, cremation has become the preferred method of disposition for a minimum of 59 percent of all deaths in the United States, reported Funeral Industry News.

Furthermore, they added that in 2022, 3,273,705 deaths were recorded in the U.S., 59 percent of those being flame cremations, according to CANA and NFDA. 

This equates to 1,931,485 cremations, the emission volume comparable to powering almost two million three-bedroom homes for a week or filling nearly two million gas tanks.

As per The Williams Lake Tribune, the 76-year-old man told the council during a committee of the whole meeting:

“I am hoping to put some pressure on by getting you people to refer a resolution to the North Central Local Government Association (NCLGA) who would hopefully promote it to the UBCM.”

However, Juliette O’Keeffe, an environmental health and knowledge translation scientist employed in British Columbia for the National Collaborating Centre for Environmental Health, mentioned that aquamation has not experienced widespread adoption in regions where it is legally permitted.

“It is a bit of an emerging technology, and that may be the reason why there hasn’t been much demand to date for it,” she added.

She explained that the process utilizes a potent alkaline solution, along with pressure and heat within a vessel, to dissolve the organic components of the human body, resulting in no emissions to the air as seen in traditional cremation methods. 

The effluent produced by the system contains a strong alkaline solution, which can be corrosive. Still, its intensity varies based on whether the aquamation system operates at low or high temperatures.

“They have slightly different operating parameters, but generally the heat, plus the strong alkali, really destroys any pathogens of note, as long as it is operated as it is intended to.”

A representative from the Ministry of Public Safety and Solicitor General in British Columbia has affirmed that the ministry is still examining the matter. That said, there is currently no expected timeline for any decisions or actions.

Brain-Dead Woman’s Baby Safely Delivered.

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Joy and sorrow for Dylan Benson of Victoria, British Columbia: He welcomed a healthy baby son into the world on Saturday night, but had to say goodbye to wife Robyn soon afterward. She was declared brain dead late last year after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage while five months pregnant and had been kept on life supportuntil it was safe to deliver the baby. She died Sunday, hours after son Iver Cohen Benson was delivered at just 28 weeks, weighing two pounds, 13 ounces. “I don’t think I have the right words to describe it,” the new father tells theVancouver Sun. “It’s the best and definitely the worst thing to ever happen to me in my life at the same time.” The couple were married just seven months ago but had met as teens 16 years ago.

After Iver was born, “we had to unfortunately say goodbye to the strongest and most wonderful woman I have ever met,” Benson wrote in a Facebook post last night. “I miss Robyn more than words can explain. I could not be more impressed with her strength, and I am so lucky to have known her. She will live on forever within Iver, and in my heart.” Iver will remain in the hospital until he is healthy enough to go home, the CBC reports. A fundraising appealfor the father and son has now raised $178,000, far above the initial goal of $36,000. The Sun notes only 30 similar cases have ever been reported in medical journals.

Lasers Could Help Identify Malaria and Other Diseases Early.

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Combining lasers with a principle discovered by Alexander Graham Bell over 100 years ago, researchers have developed a new way to collect high-resolution information about the shape of red blood cells. Because diseases like malaria can alter the shape of the body’s cells, the device may provide a way to accurately diagnose various blood disorders.

The study relies on a physical principle, known as “the photoacoustic effect,” originally discovered by Bell in 1880. The famed inventor observed that when a material absorbs light from a pulsing light source, it produces sound waves. Since then, scientists have learned that the effect occurs because the object heats up as it absorbs light; the heat causes the object to expand, and this physical change leads to the emission of sound waves.

Today, researchers can induce the photoacoustic effect by using lasers. The most advanced lasers can pulse in the nanosecond range (once every 100 of nanoseconds), generating sound waves from cells and tissues that are at very high frequencies. The higher the frequency, the more information scientists are able to glean about the shape of the object.

Michael Kolios, a photoacoustics scientist at Ryerson University in Toronto, wondered whether he could use the photoacoustic effect to determine the shape of red blood cells. His team developed a laser that pulses every 760 nanoseconds to induce red blood cells to emit sound waves with frequencies of more than 100MHz, one of the highest frequencies ever achieved. Testing the laser on blood samples collected from a group of human volunteers, Kolios and colleagues showed that the high-frequency sound waves emitted by red blood cells in the blood samples revealed the tiniest details about the cells’ shapes. The approach could accurately distinguish samples from a person with malaria, which is characterized by the swelling of red blood cells, from samples from a person with sickle cell anemia, in which the red blood cells distort into a serrated crescent shape, the team reports today in the Biophysical Journal.

The method requires as few as 21 red blood cells. Standard blood tests, in contrast, need more than one drop of blood, and red blood cells need to be analyzed manually by pathologists with a microscope, a task that is slow and prone to human error. The faster diagnosis with Kolios’s technology allows doctors to quickly determine whether the donor’s blood is disease-free immediately prior to blood transfusion. The speed of the approach outperforms standard blood tests by hours, a key advantage for life-saving blood transfusions where every second counts.

Kolios hopes to bring this new device into the clinic. But Nicholas Au, a hematopathologist at the Women’s and Children’s Hospital of British Columbia in Vancouver, says the new technique cannot replace the standard blood test, which reveals more information about the shape of white blood cells and platelets. The shape change in these cells is indicative of diseases like cancer or clotting disorders. Kolios’ team’s method works best with red blood cells because of their biconcave shape, which gives them the unique ability to absorb light better than platelets and white blood cells.

Still, Kolios’ technology holds enormous promise, says Li Hong Wang, a photoacoustics scientist of Washington University in St. Louis. “What’s exciting is the potential application of this method in identifying not only abnormal red blood cells, but also circulating tumor cells,” he says. The latter could be done, he notes, with a pulsing ultraviolet laser, which could accurately measure the amount of a light-absorbing pigment (known as melanin) inside cells using sound waves, allowing scientists to identify circulating tumor cells based on their abnormally high melanin content. While Kolios’s device could be costly, with a price tag of $100,000 for just the laser, Wang is optimistic that the price would go down in light of the growing biomedical demand.

Source: sciencemag.org