Caitlin Doughty on what happens to silicone breast implants when someone is cremated

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Caitlin Doughty, 31, revealed the potential for sticky remnants in her popular YouTube series, Ask A Mortician
The Los Angeles-based professional said most crematories won't remove implants, but they involve additional clean-up at the end
The 1,500-degree Fahrenheit heat of cremation will burn away all of the body's natural substances, leaving the bones to be ground up
Silicone implants remain behind as a goo, while metal implants, like hip replacements, remain completely intact

Published: 17:19 EST, 9 September 2015 | Updated: 13:05 EST, 10 September 2015

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When a deceased person is cremated, the body melts down, the bones are ground up, and all that's left is a nice, neat pile of ashes. That is, unless that deceased person had silicone breast implants, in which case they also leave behind sticky goo that one unlucky crematory worker has to scrape off the machinery.

Caitlin Doughty, 31, a Los Angeles-based mortician who answers the tough questions on her sometimes morbid, often funny, and always fascinating YouTube channel Ask A Mortician, revealed what really happens to fake breasts after you die in a particularly interesting episode.

When a corpse is subjected to the 1,500-degree Fahrenheit heat, all of its organic matter, besides the bones, burn up and disappear. But silicone implants withstand the heat, melting down to a gooey substance that requires some extra clean-up for cremation technicians.

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The big details: Caitlin Doughty, a Los Angeles-based mortician, revealed what happens to silcione breast implants during cremation in her YouTube series, Ask A Mortician

Well isn't that nice: Instead of burning away like organic body pasts, implants melt into a goo that has to be scraped off machinery

'In practice, [implants] are usually cremated with the body - but they have the potential to melt and leave a gelatinous goo stuck to the bottom of the machine,' Caitlin, who has also authored a book called Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory, explained in the clip.

But while certain implants, like pacemakers, are always removed before cremation - since pacemakers can explode in the extreme heat and cause damage and injury to crematory employees - breast implants require no such removal.

'There's a great quote from the Cremation Association of North America [CANA] that basically says, "Don't worry about it, it's no big deal,"' Caitlin went on. 'Which is not them denying that it happens, just [saying], "Don't worry about it, we'll scrape the goo off the bottom of the machine. We're death professionals!"'

According to Gettingit.com, Jack Springer of CANA once said: 'It's not a big deal. At one time we thought that there might be a problem, but now we no longer even ask families [on our authorization forms] whether or not the deceased has implants.'

Following protocol: The Cremation Association of North America doesn't advice or require the removal of breast implants before cremation

Unpleasant aftermath: Caitlin joked that as 'death professionals', they just have to deal with the messiness

However, some crematories do, in fact, insist on breast implant removal by either an embalmer or a surgeon, so as to make the clean-up process a bit less complicated.

This particular problem is still a relatively new one in the history of cremation, as silicone breast implants were only developed in 1961 and first used in 1962.

It is a growing issue, though. According to Fox News, as 286,250 breast augmentation surgeries were performed in the US last year, making it the most requested cosmetic procedure of 2014. Of those augmentations, 77 per cent were silicone.

And that's just in the US. As of 2011, according to the FDA, there are five to ten million women worldwide who have either silicone or saline breast implants. But saline, luckily for cremation technitions, doesn't leave same goo.

Heavy metal: In the video, she also showed off what a socket from a replacement hip looks like after cremation

Hot in here: Before cremation, the pieces are shiny (pictured, left), though they look very different after being subjected to extreme heat

While silicone implants do leave a little extra behind for crematory workers, they aren't the only remnants that refuse to burn.

'After a cremation, all that's left is a pile of inorganic bones. Everything else - hair, clothes, organs - burns away. Except metal,' Caitlin also explained in the video. 'Before the bones are ground down to make what we recognize as ashes, or cremated remains, the metal has to be removed either by hand or by a large magnet.'

That metal is usually thrown out or recycled, when it's then melted down to make road signs, plane parts, and car parts. One US company called Implant Recycling also sells the melted and recast metals back into the medical industry.