Decedent that passed from CJD arrived at our facility after being embalmed. Am I at risk?
Hello everyone, I work as an office assistant at a funeral home, and fairly new to the industry. So, the intricacies of embalming and contaminates and whatnot are beyond my knowledge. This gentleman came in, already embalmed, Thursday and I was just informed that he passed from Creutzfeldt Jakob disease and what that means. Our prep room is where we pass through to get to where we park, so I've passed by this man's body multiple times. Our bosses and the people that embalmed him had called CDC and they said it was fine, but my director coworkers don't agree with this. They're saying his brain was removed during embalming, but I have no idea if that impacts anything. But no one's really giving me any advice even though I have the least amount of knowledge on this matter, haha. I'd really like to hear from the people that actually work with these sorts of things because I'm very nervous and upset that I wasn't told anything or given any warning. Am I and my coworkers going to be ok? Thank you for reading, sorry if I'm actually just bugging out over nothing 😥
Posted Aug 3, 2026, 1:55 PM UTC