Urns May Baffle Scanners

Cremation urns are no longer sacrosanct when it comes to screening at airports - Cremation, travel an uneasy mix

By Ellen Sung
Staff Writer

The News & Observer
October 2004—Grieving families choosing a cremation urn consider many factors: material, cost and style. They don't usually think about X-ray readability.

Under new federal security rules, cremation urns are no longer sacrosanct when it comes to screening at the airport. Travelers trying to carry urns on board must send them through X-ray scanners, but the problem is that X-rays can't penetrate some urns to read the contents.

When that happens, security screeners take the urn, swab it for explosives and send it to the belly of the plane with the luggage - an unhappy option for a family in mourning.

That's where Patricia Bondor of Clayton enters the picture. Bondor, co-owner of Raleigh-based Cremation.com, is on a self-appointed quest to develop flight-friendly urns.

"I feel bad when I check my baggage," Bondor said. "I hope I get my clothes. I can't imagine ‘I hope I get my mom.' " Bondor, whose Web site is a virtual Yellow Pages of the funeral industry, has no financial stake in the urn evolution. But she hopes the federal Transportation Security Administration will endorse a standard design for urns, so passengers can carry the ashes of their loved ones.

Bondor met recently with TSA representatives, urn manufacturers and travel security experts to see whether there is a way to devise "TSA-approved" cremation urns.

Urn manufacturers are still deciding whether to pursue the official flight-friendly label.

It is tricky to determine which cremation urns are readable by security scanners. Wood and plastic urns usually can be scanned, but airport scanners might not be able to penetrate urns made of other material.

Bondor tried her own test at Raleigh-Durham International Airport in September, running a dozen urns filled with cremated pig bones through the X-ray scanner. An X-ray expert in England had told her the density mattered, so she wanted full urns.

Most of the urns passed. But Bondor said thicker urns might not be readable.

The issue gains urgency as more Americans choose cremation. In 2002, one in four Americans who died were cremated. By 2025, an estimated 43 percent of those who die in America will be cremated.

Last month, John Kane, 50, of Cary took a cherry wood cremation box with the remains of his wife, Yukiko, to RDU. Yukiko Kane, 56, had been a software engineer at IBM for more than 20 years; the couple had marked their silver anniversary a year earlier. John Kane was carrying her ashes home to Japan to be stowed in four resting places according to Buddhist custom.

Because the box was wood, it was easy for security screeners in Raleigh, Washington and Japan to see the contents. But if he had chosen a thick pewter urn, he likely would have had to send Yukiko's remains into baggage - and he would have been terrified of losing them, he said.

"It had to be with me," Kane said. "And I would make a big fuss if they tried to get it off of me."

Until the standards are created, travel security authorities strongly recommend that people travel with cremated remains in a cardboard box or temporary container, then move them into a permanent urn on arrival.

Switching boxes "can be not a great thing to go through," said Scott MacKenzie, vice-president of urn manufacturer MacKenzie Vault Inc., in East Longmeadow, Mass. "They would rather travel with one urn that Mom or Dad are going to stay in."

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