By: RUBÉN ROSARIO

Like most people still kicking, I'm debating whether I should be buried, entombed or cremated. Now, thanks to a freshman legislator from Rochester, Minnesotans have another legal option. A new law that takes effect Friday will allow for the disposal of human bodies through a disintegration process that is used by some medical research centers to destroy biohazard materials and animal waste, particularly carcasses contaminated by chronic wasting disease and similar pathogens.

"I'm having a hard time finding the right word for it, but what's left (of the remains) is … more pleasant-looking than ashes,'' said state Sen. David Senjem, R-Rochester, who admits he took some ribbing from colleagues when his bill reached the Senate floor this year.

The process, called alkaline hydrolysis, dissolves body tissue, leaving calcified skeletal remains that are easily crushed into a fine white powder and placed in an urn. Proponents of this non-incineration technology attest that it is an environmentally cleaner process than cremation, and it destroys pathogens.

Florida is the only other state that legally disposes human remains in such a manner. The University of Florida's College of Medicine has used the process on more than 3,000 people who donated their bodies to science.

"Perhaps it'll catch on with family members; perhaps it'll go the way of the Edsel,'' added Senjem, an environmental affairs officer for the Mayo Clinic who got the idea when a vendor from Indiana pitched the method to hospital executives.

WR2 (Waste Reduction by Waste Reduction Inc.) is the Indianapolis-based company that has the patent for animal and "cadaver digester'' units. The company is under contract to build alkaline hydrolysis units at the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin.

Developed by two Albany, N.Y., medical college professors and company co-founders in 1992, the process is chemically accelerates the method by which food is broken down and digested.

The body is placed inside a steel alloy container and im-mersed in a highly potent alkaline solution, either sodium hy-droxide or potassium hydroxide. The pressurized vessel's contents are then heated to about 300 de-grees for a minimum of three hours.

Excluding the bones and teeth, the remains are converted into an EPA-safe liquid solution of amino acids, sugars and soap that can be released into the sewer system or used as fertilizer or compost.

"You can send Aunt Bertha back to the sea, or use her as fertilizer, not that you would want to,'' quipped company President and CEO Joe Wilson. "Seriously, this is speeding up the same decomposition process that would take years under the earth, and it doesn't release potential pollutants into the air like incineration.''

The Minnesota Funeral Directors Association has no serious objection. "The only concern we had was that the process should not be included in the same section of the law that contains cremation because they are two distinct processes and it might confuse people,'' said Executive Director Kelly Guncheon.

Because the human disposal unit can cost $200,000 or more, Guncheon said it might be too costly for funeral homes. Though there are no such units in use outside Florida, a company investor who owns a chain of funeral homes in Michigan has received a state variance to build a human disposal trial site near Detroit.

Perhaps I'll follow the spirit of Bob Hope's advice when asked by his family about where he wanted to be buried: "Surprise me.''

http://www.twincities.com/mld/pioneerpress/6413567.htm