It was an ominous sign. While traveling through the Govans neighborhood on Monday at noontime, Lisa Polyak observed smoke coming from the rear of the Vaughn Greene Funeral Home on York Road.

A retired environmental engineer, she parked her car and took photos of the black fumes rising from a 40-foot-high smokestack outfitted to look like a bell tower.

“The discharge lasted at least 10 minutes,” she told The Brew. Which is something that’s not supposed to happen.

The permit to construct the highly controversial crematorium prohibits visible stack emissions except during start-up and occasional equipment cleaning. In those cases, no more than six consecutive minutes of smoke in a 50-minute period is allowed.

Polyak immediately alerted Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE), which issued the permit after a bitter battle between the funeral home and local residents, who said burning human remains so close to their homes would harm their health and decrease property values.

During a zoning hearing, owner Vaughn C. Greene called community objections overblown and insisted that, once the crematory was in place, passersby wouldn’t even know it was there.

He said he was simply a businessman meeting the demands for an alternative to costly burials, arguing that “only in Baltimore City, the largest city in the state, [are] minority citizens deprived of the services that they need.”

Vaughn Greene began operations this month, notifying MDE on July 1 of its intention of start burning human remains with a Matthews gas-fired system that operates at 1600°F and accommodates body weights of up to 800 pounds.

“This is a densely populated neighborhood. The closest houses less than 200 feet from the incinerator,” Polyak said. “The smoke I saw was drifting south toward where those houses are located.”

Along with the York Road Partnership, Govans Ecumenical Development Corporation and 10 community associations, Polyak had opposed the crematory during the long zoning and legal dispute.

“That such emissions are produced so early into the lifetime of the crematory is very concerning, especially after all the assurances provided to the community about the efficiency and safety of the crematory equipment,” she said.

Vaughn Greene did not return a phone message to staff seeking comment about the black smoke and status of crematory operations.

Is the Equipment Working?

State rules call for 0% visible stack emissions in Baltimore City, and the MDE construction permit instructs Vaughn Greene to equip the incinerator with “an opacity sensor interlocked with a control system that continuously monitors the stack gases for visible emissions during operation and adjusts cremation operations to prevent visible emission from exiting the crematory stack.”

Polyak says what she observed on Monday raises questions about whether the sensor works properly, and why the interlocked control system didn’t self-adjust operations to minimize the smoke levels she witnessed.

According to a permit application, the Vaughn Greene crematorium would emit on a daily basis 2.28 pounds of sulfur dioxide, 3.74 pounds of nitrogen oxides, 4.9 pounds of particulate matter and 3.09 pounds of carbon monoxide (CO).

Pollution from these sources is commonly associated with asthma, COPD and other chronic respiratory disease, lung cancer, heart disease and stroke.

Vaporized mercury is also a potential health concern, although the construction permit calls on Vaughn Green to remove all human teeth containing mercury amalgams prior to incineration. (It also prohibits the burning of plastics, hospital waste and municipal waste.)

“Crematorium emissions are among the least studied and least characterized of incinerator emissions,” says Polyak, who worked as an environmental and chemical engineer at the Defense Center for Public Health at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.

Late on Monday, MDE sent out an air pollution compliance officer.

He reported no observable emissions between 4:25 and 4:55 p.m., but also noted that “the cremation unit did not appear to be in operation during this observation.”

Vaughn Greene is not required to undergo emissions testing for three month after the start of operations, which means that stack data won’t be available until mid-September at the earliest.

MDE spokesman Jay Apperson said the agency is continuing to investigate the smoke complaint.

Prior Brew Coverage

• Residents along York Road come together to oppose crematorium (8/30/21)

• Zoning Board approves controversial crematorium request (11/19/21)

• Judge upholds Zoning Board approval of York Road crematorium (5/17/23)

• With cremation growing in popularity, a setback bill is debated in Annapolis (2/29/24)

• Latest effort to stop York Road crematorium – a zoning change? (10/1/24)

• At a hearing on bill to restrict where in Baltimore crematoriums can be, two views of on racial disparity (11/21/24)