Francisco Rivero proudly shows off a large stainless steel pod in the middle of a cavernous concrete room. He unlatches its heavy vault door, swinging it open slowly to reveal an inner chamber just large enough for a person to lie inside.
Rivero is a funeral director at Pacific Interment Service in Emeryville, and the futuristic machine is an aquamation system. It uses water to dissolve every part of the human body except for the bones and teeth — a process also called alkaline hydrolysis. Rivero founded Pacific Interment in , specializing in cremation at a time when the process was not widely used.
In December , he installed his aquamation system, becoming the first to offer the service in the Bay Area and one of only four aquamation providers in California. Rivero is convinced aquamation is the future of the funeral industry, and is on a mission to spread the word about a gentler, environmentally friendly alternative to cremation. Though it has only been available to funeral homes in California since , the concept of cremation by water actually stretches back to the 19th century.
A pioneering version of the process was patented by Amos Herbert Hobson, a British farmer who had immigrated to the U. The modern-day take on an alkaline hydrolysis system for human cadavers arrived in when one was installed at the Mayo Clinic. In the aquamation process, the body is placed inside the machine, and the sealed chamber partially fills with a mixture of water and sodium hydroxide.
The solution is then heated to degrees Fahrenheit and circulated over the body, quietly breaking down its soft tissues, along with any bacteria and viruses. After three hours, all that remains is a pristine skeleton and a yellowish liquid that is safe to empty straight into the sewer. Rivero emigrated from Cuba in , where his family had performed funerals since at least the 19th century.
