The Embalming of Mr. Jones

Introduction

In November 2024, the Federal Trade Commission published the results of its first undercover phone sweep of the American funeral industry, revealing that dozens of funeral homes gave callers inconsistent pricing and, in some cases, falsely claimed that embalming was required by law (Federal Trade Commission, 2024). The finding is not new so much as it is newly documented. More than six decades ago, critics of the death-care industry used the fictionalized figure of "Mr. Jones" to dramatize how an ordinary corpse is transformed, step by step, into a profitable and largely unnecessary procedure.

That critique still resonates in 2026, as families continue to make expensive, irreversible decisions about a deceased relative's body within hours of a loss, often without being told that embalming is, in nearly every U.S. state, optional rather than obligatory. This essay argues that federal and state regulators should mandate itemized, written informed consent before embalming is performed, disclosing both its cost and its occupational and environmental externalities. Such a requirement would not ban embalming outright; rather, it would correct an information asymmetry that has persisted since Mr. Jones's era. The argument proceeds in three parts: first, examining the cultural and commercial construction of embalming as a default expectation; second, evaluating the occupational and environmental costs that consumers rarely see; and third, assessing how existing regulatory gaps and emerging alternatives make a consent mandate both feasible and timely.

The story of Mr. Jones illustrates a broader pattern: bereaved families are frequently steered toward embalming not because it is legally necessary, but because it has become the unspoken default of the American funeral transaction. Recent audits suggest this pattern persists. During its 2023 undercover sweep, FTC staff documented funeral homes that misrepresented local health regulations, including incorrect assertions that embalming was mandatory for viewing or transport (Elite Learning, 2025). This matters because the Funeral Rule, first enacted in 1984 and still awaiting its first substantive update, already requires itemized price disclosure but does not require providers to state, in writing, that embalming is elective (Federal Trade Commission, 2024). The gap between what the law requires and what grieving consumers are actually told is where the Mr. Jones narrative continues to have force.

The consolidation of the funeral industry compounds this problem. Independent, family-run funeral homes have increasingly been absorbed into national chains that retain local branding while centralizing pricing and sales practices, a shift that can obscure who ultimately profits from an embalming recommendation (AARP, 2024). Grieving consumers, who arrange funerals rarely and under acute emotional stress, are structurally disadvantaged relative to sellers who transact daily (AARP, 2024). It would be an overstatement to claim that every funeral director deliberately misleads clients; many likely believe, in good faith, that embalming is the respectful or hygienic default. Nonetheless, the aggregate effect, documented across hundreds of calls to providers nationwide, is a market in which the presumption of necessity substitutes for genuine consent. A written disclosure requirement would not accuse individual practitioners of bad faith; it would simply close the gap between practice and policy, ensuring that every family, not only the well-informed ones, understands that embalming is a choice rather than a formality.

Beyond consumer economics, embalming carries occupational and environmental costs that rarely appear on a funeral home's price list, and their omission weakens the case that current disclosure practices are adequate. A 2022 exposure study measured formaldehyde concentrations in thirteen U.S. funeral homes and found task-length concentrations reaching as high as 1.4 parts per million during embalming procedures, with embalmers facing meaningfully higher exposure than office staff (Allen et al., 2022). The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's 2024 toxicological review classifies inhaled formaldehyde as carcinogenic to humans, a determination consistent with the International Agency for Research on Cancer's own assessment (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2024). Qualitative research reinforces these quantitative findings: interviews with nineteen mortuary attendants in Ghana documented recurring complaints of skin irritation, respiratory distress, and a pervasive fear of cancer among workers who had received little formal training on chemical safety (Akortiakumah et al., 2022). Although that study was conducted outside the United States, its findings align closely with decades of occupational health literature and suggest that embalmer exposure is a structural feature of the practice rather than an isolated failure of a few poorly run facilities.

The environmental dimension deserves equal attention, even if its magnitude remains under active scientific debate. Formaldehyde-based fluids can migrate from buried caskets into surrounding soil, and researchers examining a Tennessee cemetery detected residual formaldehyde in soil samples decades after burial, though they cautioned that sample size and site-specific conditions limited how far their conclusions could generalize (Impact on Environmental Health from Cemetery Waste, n.d.). By contrast, a 2024 review of natural burial practices found that unembalmed, shroud-based interment can support beneficial soil ecosystem functions rather than degrade them, positioning green burial as a comparatively low-impact alternative (Pawlett et al., 2024). Taken together, these findings do not prove that every embalmed burial causes measurable ecological harm; the evidence is probabilistic and geographically uneven. What the evidence does establish is that embalming imposes costs on workers and, plausibly, on ecosystems that a purely transactional price list cannot capture. A consent form that names these externalities, however briefly, would allow consumers to weigh them rather than remain unaware of them entirely.

Regulatory momentum, while incomplete, suggests that an informed-consent mandate is both timely and achievable. The FTC opened an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the Funeral Rule in October 2022 and held a public workshop in September 2023, yet as of 2026 that process has not produced a finalized amendment (Federal Trade Commission, 2024). Legal scholars convened at a 2024 Wake Forest University symposium on death care policy specifically debated how the Funeral Rule might evolve to address consumer protection alongside newer disposition methods, indicating that reform is actively contemplated even if it has not yet been enacted (Wake Forest University School of Law, 2024). Advocacy organizations such as AARP have separately called for mandatory online price disclosure, which would complement, rather than substitute for, a point-of-sale consent requirement (AARP, 2024).

The rapid legalization of natural organic reduction, or human composting, offers indirect evidence that state legislatures are willing to revisit death-care defaults when presented with credible alternatives. Fewer than a dozen states permitted the practice in early 2024; by 2025, that number had grown past a dozen, with several additional states actively considering legislation (Order of the Good Death, 2025). This legislative pace suggests that death-care regulation, often assumed to be static, can shift meaningfully within a few years when public interest and industry innovation align. It should be acknowledged that this expansion has not been without friction; some religious organizations have raised objections grounded in traditional views of bodily treatment after death, and any consent-based reform should anticipate similar, though likely narrower, resistance from segments of the funeral industry that rely on embalming revenue (Order of the Good Death, 2025). Even so, a disclosure requirement is considerably less disruptive than an outright restriction, since it preserves consumer choice while correcting the information gap that the Mr. Jones narrative first identified.

Conclusion

The case of Mr. Jones was never really about one hypothetical corpse; it was, and remains, about the space between what funeral consumers are told and what they would choose to do if fully informed. The evidence assembled here indicates that this space has not closed. Federal audits from 2023 and 2024 continue to find funeral homes misstating embalming as mandatory, occupational studies continue to document meaningful formaldehyde exposure among embalmers, and environmental research, while still evolving, raises credible concerns about long-term soil impacts. A federally mandated, itemized written consent requirement, specifying that embalming is optional and briefly disclosing its known occupational and environmental externalities, would directly address each of these findings without banning the practice or infringing on families who genuinely prefer it.

The broader implication extends beyond funeral policy narrowly conceived. As natural organic reduction and other alternatives continue to expand across state lines, regulators face a widening menu of disposition options that consumers are largely unequipped to evaluate under time pressure and grief. Future research should track whether consent disclosures measurably change embalming rates once implemented, and comparative studies across the states that have already modernized their funeral rules could offer useful natural experiments. In the meantime, state attorneys general and the FTC should treat the stalled 2022 rulemaking process not as a shelved initiative but as unfinished business. Mr. Jones deserved a family that understood its options; American consumers in 2026 deserve nothing less.

References

1. Akortiakumah, J. K., Dartey, A. F., Kuug, A. K., Lotse, C. W., Gnagmache, G. K., & Raji, A. S. (2022). A qualitative exploratory study on the effects of formalin on mortuary attendants. SAGE Open Medicine, 10. https://doi.org/10.1177/20503121221131216
2. Allen, L. H., Hamaji, C., Allen, H. L., Parker, G. H., Ennis, J. S., & Kreider, M. L. (2022). Assessment of formaldehyde exposures under contemporary embalming conditions in U.S. funeral homes. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 19(7), 425–436. https://doi.org/10.1080/15459624.2022.2076861
3. American Association of Retired Persons. (2024). Funerals and related services. AARP Policy Book. https://policybook.aarp.org/policy-book/consumer-rights-and-protection/other-consumer-protections/funerals-and-related-services
4. Elite Learning. (2025). Ethical issues in funeral pricing and service transparency. https://www.elitelearning.com/resource-center/funeral/ethical-issues-in-funeral-pricing/
5. Federal Trade Commission. (2024, January 25). When consumers call funeral homes: FTC undercover sweep suggests seven compliance points for industry members. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/topics/truth-advertising/funeral-rule
6. Impact on environmental health from cemetery waste in Middle Tennessee. (n.d.). PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10970330/
7. Order of the Good Death. (2025). Support composting legislation. https://www.orderofthegooddeath.com/get-involved/legislative-advocacy/support-composting-legislation/
8. Pawlett, M., Girkin, N. T., Deeks, L., Evans, D. L., Sakrabani, R., Masters, P., Garnett, K., & Márquez-Grant, N. (2024). The contribution of natural burials to soil ecosystem services: Review and emergent research questions. Applied Soil Ecology, 194, Article 105200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsoil.2023.105200
9. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). IRIS toxicological review of formaldehyde – inhalation (Final report). https://iris.epa.gov/document/&deid=361799
10. Wake Forest University School of Law. (2024, May). Politics, policies, and price lists: Unpacking the future of death care in America symposium. https://law.wfu.edu/2024/05/politics-policies-and-price-lists-unpacking-the-future-of-death-care-in-america-symposium/

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