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If it is a dead body and it is being cremated you take it out so it doesn't explode in the crematorium. I say this as a former funeral director who had to remov
by ToddWBurgess 4y ago
If it is a dead body and it is being cremated you take it out so it doesn't explode in the crematorium. I say this as a former funeral director who had to remove them.
- Vaslo 4y agoWas just coming here to ask this - thanks for the info!
- masklinn 4y agoI assume it's mostly an issue with the li-ion battery pacemakers? Plutonium wouldn't explode, though the casing may crack which would be less than ideal.
- elliekelly 4y agoI'm curious whether it was standard practice for you to check for a pacemaker prior to cremation or whether the process relied on a family member informing you?
- lucakiebel 4y agoThe doctors that sign off the cremation have to provide info on pacemakers/artificial joints and so on to the crematorium
- landofredwater 4y ago> artificial joints Would you have to remove the joints as well then? How are you meant to properly dispose of something like a knee or a hip?
- jrockway 4y agoAutoclave and sell for scrap?
- lucakiebel 4y agoMake it a modern art piece? Titanium hips look pretty dope
- lucakiebel 4y agoBut, for real, there’s companies that recycle artificial joints.
- Teever 4y agoMy friend burned bodies in a crematorium, he said that afterwards he would sift through the ashes for things like hips and pins and screws.
- klyrs 4y agoVaguely related, the crematorium stole my grandpa's gold fillings, much to my grandmother's dismay.
- phyzome 4y agoI feel like an x-ray machine might be a reasonable investment. It's not gonna hurt the body.
- KennyBlanken 4y agoAn X-ray machine has capital and operating expenses, requires significant safety measures, licensing/inspection (at least in the US), and a trained technician. That all is significantly more expensive than saying "you hand us a form telling us whether there's a pacemaker or not, and if you fuck it up you get in trouble."
- phyzome 4y agoIs that true even of industrial X-ray machines, or are those mostly specific to medical X-rays, where there's a living subject? Fair point on suing people probably being cheaper, though. -.-
- bookofjoe 4y ago>Pacemaker explosions in crematoria: problems and possible solutions https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/
- inciampati 4y agoFascinating read and a lovely example of a simple and pragmatic socioscientific study. Cool!
- mabbo 4y agoHackerNews truly does pull from a large swatch of interesting people, doesn't it?
- kierkegaard_s 4y agoboiling it down, what would you say is the link between most common HNers?
- thomascgalvin 4y agoInternet access.
- incognition 4y agoReductio ad absurdum
- steve_mcdougall 4y agoIts levisoSAH not leviooosa
- monkeydust 4y ago+ unfufilled at work, too curious, better than their peers on the job.
- leaflets2 4y agoI love my job :-) and HN makes me better at it (new tech, psychology, understanding organizations, society...)
- throwawaylinux 4y agoStrikingly handsome, charming, physique like a Greek god...
- pxmpxm 4y agoI suspect this speaks far more about you than the readership here...
- alasdair_ 4y ago“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” Thus begins one of my favorite Ian Banks novels, starting with exactly this event.
- therealdrag0 4y ago“The crow road”, to save others the lookup.
- sizzle 4y agoGot any stories of it exploding or more generally speaking things the common public wouldn’t know about from your experience in this fascinating job.
- ghufran_syed 4y agoyeah, in england the resident doctors in training would get paid 25 pounds to certify there was no such device in a body, it was unofficially known as “ash cash”