# Cremation Question **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 1, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528 "2015-02-01T18:30:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![SanDiegoTim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/85e7bf/32.png) [@SanDiegoTim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanDiegoTim)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/1 "2015-02-01T18:30:41Z")
When before or during the cremation process are artificial joints removed? ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/2 "2015-02-01T18:33:51Z")
I believe they are removed from the ‘ashes’. ETA: [Cite](https://doctor2008.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/what-happens-to-artificial-body-parts-when-you-die/). > [@](#): > > In the case of cremated bodies, such parts are retrievable among the ashes. In fact, there are companies which recycle metal implants from cremated human bodies. That’s everything from steel pins to titanium hips and cobalt-chrome knees. In the US alone, there are quite a few companies which even use magnets to sort out the metallic parts from the cremated remains. . ---
**Author:** ![Morgenstern](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Morgenstern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgenstern)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/3 "2015-02-01T19:02:55Z")
Wow, they recycle the metal parts and the family doesn’t share in the recycling revenue? Seems unfair. If Uncle Joe had some expensive joints, which he supposedly paid for, why does someone else get to claim them and resell them once he passes? Doesn’t make sense. ETA, What about gold teeth, etc? ---
**Author:** ![usedtobe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ec9cab/32.png) [@usedtobe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/usedtobe)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/4 "2015-02-01T22:03:59Z")
Dead people don’t own anything. Not even their bodies. If the deceased had executed an organ donor agreement, would that include re-usable bits of metal? If you want to get upset: If you go to the medical establishment and they discover that you have an incredibly rare (and profitable) tissue type, they can market that tisssue and you are not entitled to a cent ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [February 1, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/5 "2015-02-01T22:12:48Z")
Do they reuse the joint as a joint implanted in a new patient or do they recycle the titanium as scrap? There’s a big difference in return. ---
**Author:** ![bob\_2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bob_2/32/3341_2.png) [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 12:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/6 "2015-02-02T00:02:19Z")
All you need to know (and a lot you didn’t) about what happens after death in the UK > **[What really happens when you die? Meet the people who handle us after death](https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/feb/16/healthandwellbeing.weekend2)** > > It's not something we like to talk about much. We may know our local funeral parlour, but do we know what really goes on there? Or what an embalmer actually does? Or how long a cremation takes, and how it works? Rebecca Atkinson and Sarah Tavner talk... > [@](#): > > All that is left are the ashes from the body, plus nails and screws from the coffin and any artificial steel joints or metal plates. There may also be some bone fragments left. It tends to be the hip and the shin bones, because they are quite large. There will be more bones if it is a large-framed or young person. Young bones are stronger and reduce less easily. The remains are raked into a steel bin at the bottom of the cremator to cool, before being transferred into a machine called a cremulator, which contains steel balls that grind down the remains into a fine ash. Your ID card goes into the cremulator, along with a plastic urn with your cremation number on it that the ashes fall into at the end. The cremulator filters any artificial joints or metal and these are buried in a deep hole at the back of the crematorium, although we are looking into ways of recycling them. ---
**Author:** ![Hail\_Ants](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/dc4da7/32.png) [@Hail\_Ants](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hail_Ants)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/7 "2015-02-02T02:59:42Z")
There’s the old story about a small amount of early pacemakers that were powered by isotope heat decay units (i.e. nuclear batteries). It was important that these be removed before cremation as vaporizing and potentially breathing in nuclear material is not good. Pretty sure this was true, but very uncommon. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/8 "2015-02-02T03:05:23Z")
Well, there’s that. Plus there’s the potential for the [pacemaker to explode in the crematorium](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1279940/). ---
**Author:** ![grude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e47774/32.png) [@grude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/grude)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 6:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/9 "2015-02-02T06:58:10Z")
> [@usedtobe](#): > > Dead people don’t own anything. > > Not even their bodies. > > If the deceased had executed an organ donor agreement, would that include re-usable bits of metal? > > If you want to get upset: If you go to the medical establishment and they discover that you have an incredibly rare (and profitable) tissue type, they can market that tisssue and you are not entitled to a cent Of course dead people don’t own anything, but their estate and family become the new owners. It isn’t like it is legal for me to rifle through the pockets of someone hit by a bus and grab their iphone, so why should a crematorium get to do this? ---
**Author:** ![GrumpyBunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/bc8723/32.png) [@GrumpyBunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrumpyBunny)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/10 "2015-02-02T07:14:02Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > Do they reuse the joint as a joint implanted in a new patient… No. Recycling joints is a bad idea (and probably illegal). Though I am pretty sure there was a Law & Order episode about that. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 7:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/11 "2015-02-02T07:31:40Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Of course dead people don’t own anything, but their estate and family become the new owners. > > It isn’t like it is legal for me to rifle through the pockets of someone hit by a bus and grab their iphone, so why should a crematorium get to do this? The executor/estate may own the possessions, goods, etc of the deceased, but they don’t own their remains; they have rights and/or duties with respect to disposal of the remains, but there is no ownership in a corpse. Interesting question as to what the status of surgical implants, etc might be. Are they considered to be part of the corpse, and so incapable of ownership? Or are they considered to be personal possessions of the deceased, which pass as part of the estate? I suspect the latter but I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/12 "2015-02-02T11:11:24Z")
> [@GrumpyBunny](#): > > No. Recycling joints is a bad idea (and probably illegal). Though I am pretty sure there was a Law & Order episode about that. In that case we’re talking about a few dollars. Scrap titanium runs maybe $8.50 a pound, sure it’s expensive compared to aluminum or steel, but nobody’s getting rich off a couple of artificial knees or hips. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/13 "2015-02-02T18:04:09Z")
> [@grude](#): > > Of course dead people don’t own anything, but their estate and family become the new owners. > > It isn’t like it is legal for me to rifle through the pockets of someone hit by a bus and grab their iphone, so why should a crematorium get to do this? My WAG is there’s a clause in the paperwork the next-of-kin singes to authorize the cremation dealing with this. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 8:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/14 "2015-02-02T20:39:19Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > My WAG is there’s a clause in the paperwork the next-of-kin singes to authorize the cremation dealing with this. I see what you did there. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/15 "2015-02-02T20:45:13Z")
A friend mentioned that his mother had to have one of her artificial joints replaced. (I can’t remember if it was the hip, knee or something else.) The old joint was returned to her, as it was considered her property. (He mentioned this in context of seeing marks from a pair of pliers on the joint and wondering at how much they had to struggle to remove it.) So I’d think at cremation, any artificial joints would be the property of the family. ---
**Author:** ![corefive](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/2acd7d/32.png) [@corefive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/corefive)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 10:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/16 "2015-02-02T22:27:10Z")
When my mother was cremated, I requested and received her artificial hip. I received only the femoral ball and stem, not the acetabular cup, probably because the cup wasn’t metal. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Goob](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c77e96/32.png) [@Mr.Goob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Goob)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2015, 10:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/17 "2015-02-02T22:32:41Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > A friend mentioned that his mother had to have one of her artificial joints replaced. (I can’t remember if it was the hip, knee or something else.) The old joint was returned to her, as it was considered her property. (He mentioned this in context of seeing marks from a pair of pliers on the joint and wondering at how much they had to struggle to remove it.) So I’d think at cremation, any artificial joints would be the property of the family. My old company makes stainless steel hips and knees. Installing the hip joint, the drill and ream into the femur then pound in the steel joint with a hammer. It isn’t gentle or pretty. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Milton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/6bbea6/32.png) [@Mr.Milton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Milton)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2015, 12:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/18 "2015-02-03T12:58:44Z")
> [@](#): > > Dead people don’t own anything. > > Not even their bodies. > > If the deceased had executed an organ donor agreement, would that include re-usable bits of metal? > > If you want to get upset: **If you go to the medical establishment and they discover that you have an incredibly rare (and profitable) tissue type, they can market that tisssue and you are not entitled to a cent** [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta\_Lacks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henrietta_Lacks) ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [February 3, 2015, 1:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cremation-question/711528/19 "2015-02-03T13:10:18Z")
Well that settles it. I ain’t dyin.