Some neighbours of the lower Sunshine Coast's only funeral home are raising questions about having a crematorium in a residential neighbourhood and calling for air quality regulations.
The Devlin Funeral Home has operated in Gibsons’ Heritage Hills area since 1943. A crematorium was added to that Seaview Road facility in 1986.
Parts of that business’s operations are regulated by local government and others by Consumer Protection BC (CPBC). There are no rules for airborne emissions from crematoria. No data is available on the emission contents, the volumes of smoke that are being released or the safety of either.
On March 25, Cheri LePage and her partner reported experiencing unusual headaches and “scratchy throats” after walking in the area when a smoke release occurred. That prompted her to contact CPBC and the Town of Gibsons to outline her concerns and call for changes.
“We want immediate action for the crematorium to be moved to an industrial location. After my own reaction, it's worth considering a health impact study, as well as a carbon footprint study,” she wrote in an email to Coast Reporter.
There are diverging views about crematorium smoke and its impacts held by Devlin’s operator and its neighbours.
According to Barry Janyk, who has lived in the neighbourhood since 2008 (and was Gibsons’ mayor from 1999 to 2011), residents have raised questions about air quality since the crematorium opened.
Devlin’s owner, Gail Thurber, points out that the business was in its location before adjacent residential development arrived and that smoke emissions from the facility were creating “absolutely no harm”.
Operator asks for 'patience'
In an April 14 interview, Thurber emphasized that Devlin is “operating within the municipal bylaws, the CPBC standards and all other license and legal bodies that may exist”.
Recent releases of darker smoke were a temporary situation she explained, due to major maintenance that was completed on crematorium equipment. That work is done every four to six years. It is followed by adjusting components so that the burning process is re-calibrated. Thurber noted that the process involves more than one “reset” session, done by specialized off-Coast contractors who are not always immediately available. “It takes a bit of time,” she said.
She remarked that they had received recent complaints about the smoke from residential neighbours. Asked how she would be responding, Thurber said, “Patience is what I would ask for."
“We don’t want the problem as much as they don’t want the problem,” she said, outlining that the business was working to rectify the situation.
“We do everything within our power to maintain homeostasis with the neighbours while at the same time serving our community with the care of their deceased loved ones," she said.
Thurber said staff stand at the crematorium chamber when it is operated. Should more intense smoke than normal be detected, they shut down or adjust the process. Her statement was that heavy smoke releases “don’t last for more than 10 to 30 seconds”.
Devlin’s cremation process uses a natural gas fuelled burning chamber that operates at 1600 degrees C. Clothed bodies of the deceased, in containers made of cardboard or unvarnished pine are burned. Smoke in the stack is regulated by a photometric sensor that uses a light to measure the volume and density of the emission and throttles back the burning process as needed.
Smoke investigated in 2018
Thurber purchased the business in 2016 and confirmed there had been a previous investigation about emissions. In August 2018, Vancouver Coast Health’s medical health officer, Geoff McKee, responded to a Town of Gibsons inquiry on “the health implications of crematorium emissions” and “recently reported malfunctions resulting in 'blacksmoke' events” at Devlin. After a review, McKee wrote, “Given the available information, under normal operations, the risk to human health posed by the emissions from the Devlin Funeral Home crematorium appears to be low.”
This year, issues with smoke were more severe in Janyk’s assessment. “It was never this often and this bad,” he stated.
“We conduct regular and unannounced inspections of all our licensed sectors," a CPBC spokesperson wrote in an email, but those do not involve emissions monitoring. The date of the facility’s most recent CPBC inspection wasn’t confirmed by either party. A CPBC spokesperson stated two inspections had been done since 2019, with Devlin’s found in compliance both times.
Can smoke be regulated?
Janyk stated that in his view, responsibility for regulations about the smoke should rest with the Ministry of the Environment, “as these are obviously airborne emissions”. He also would like to see Vancouver Coastal Health taking action as “an advocate here for public health and safety.”
LePage’s request to the Town was to “review the continued appropriateness of its location for a crematorium”.
In an email response, Mayor Silas White acknowledged LePage’s concerns. He explained the town’s authority to act was limited to its existing bylaws and wrote, “At the local level I’d like to take another crack at improving our clean air bylaw."
CPBC indicated the volume or time frame of emissions are things that may be determined through the bylaws of the area in which a crematorium does business. A CPBC email detailed that in its licensing process “we require proof that local governments and other professionals have considered the implications of the crematorium and have no issues… we require all businesses to provide documents from their municipality, regional board or local trust committee confirming that the proposed use is permitted by its bylaws, and that the site and the building plans for the crematorium have been approved.
“We have no legal grounds nor the expertise to pursue complaints about air quality," the email read.
Cremation numbers and alternatives
Neither Thurber nor CPBC were willing to share numbers on cremations done at Devlin’s facility. Thurber commented that in her time with Devlin’s, the volume of cremations “has not changed significantly…there were ups and downs with COVID and in the past year I have noticed a small increase in numbers, likely to do with demographics and more people moving to the Coast.”
In 2022, the BC Vital Statistics Agency reported 351 deaths of persons with lower Sunshine Coast-based addresses, down from 392 in 2021. That number was 372 in 2018. A 2022 consultants report provided to the Sunshine Coast Regional District indicated that between 2016 to 2021, there was an average 330 cremations and 18 casket burials each year for those who died while residing within the local health authority area, but where those services were performed was not disclosed.
LePage said she would like to see public education on more environmentally friendly methods of interment to help reduce the number of cremations.
Thurber said Devlin's plans to continue to offer cremation as that is the “available option”. Changing to processes like aquamation, terramation or green burials, she explained, are outside of the funeral home’s jurisdiction.
While regulation of the facility's airborne emissions could be introduced by government, she indicated “no plans” to change operations at the current location or to look at relocating the cremation facility.
