Microwave Ovens and Your Health

I have been looking at the claims made about microwaves. Some are correct, some are false, some are misleading, some are not determined yet.

There is probably as much of an ionizing radiation source in your own body than any microwave. It does contain toxic materials, so an exploded or very damaged microwave is highly poisonous - but not due to radiation. There is intrinsically not much difference between radiation from a microwave than from a TV tower or cellphone tower, or even your own cellphone. The main difference is intensity, if the microwave shielding is damaged.

Many of the claims being made are sensible if taken at face value, but the inferences made are not. It is a little like saying that sunlight is dangerous and you should stay in the dark because it can cause skin cancers. While sunlight does have some good health properites (e.g. involving vitamin D), I cannot see that microwave radiation could be actively beneficial, so this comparison is not perfect.

I have not read the original scientific results in which changes in the blood chemistry after eating microwaved foods were noticed. It could be mistaken, incorrect inferencing, or completely right - but I definitely do not trust these kinds of sources. Never trust brief comments, they are frequently distorted. This of course applies to posts like mine - it pays to verify information yourself if you are concerned. In fact in my experience I found that most abstracts of most scientific papers I have read are misleading to some extent - only by reading the full paper (and sometimes not even then) can you get a good understanding of the implications.

A case in point is this: while microwave radiation can induce many of the problems discussed, it is a combination of exposure level and the person's vulnerability that determine damage. So a case might be made that those with ME or CFS could be more vulnerable (for a number of reasons) but this will just lower the safe exposure level.

So here is what I agree with:

1. Microwaves contain toxic materials, and a highly damaged microwave (especially the magnetron) is extremely toxic. So is your mobile phone or TV or computer to some extent.

2. Microwaves do deplete food value of foods - nutrition is compromised. This is because it heats up molecules, particularly charged molecules, and can rip them apart. Personally as far as toxins are concerned I would be more worried about burning food in an oven or griller - dark browning on food represents changes that can in some cases be carcinogenic. Slow cooking food is the best compromise, such as with traditional mediteranean cooking. Remember that any heating of food can increase toxins, and not heating food can expose you to pathogens. There are risks either way.

3. Microwave radiation at low levels, for an undamaged microwave oven, is no more dangerous than other forms of electromagnetic radiation. That is to say, not very dangerous in moderation, but not good as exposure increases. The problem is that cell phone towers, computers, home TVs, mobile phones, even the power cables in your house all produce radiation. I have seen claims that some new electronic powermeters have high radiation leakage. The microwave oven can be a major radiation source, but just about everything electrical these days can also be a dangerous radiation source.

4. Microwave ovens do not contain any more (ionizing) radiactive material than your own body that I am aware of.

5. Many plastics used in microwave containers, including many that were once thought safe, are highly dangerous. They can release volatile compounds that are very toxic. I never use plastic to cook in my microwave oven.

6. If the microwave shielding is damaged, or the door does not fit, throw the microwave away. Very old microwave ovens should also be disposed of. These can leak radiation and so increase risk.

7. Conventional electric ovens frequently cause severe scolds and death in adults and children. They can also explode, but it is rare. There is risk in any high energy appliance - electricity deserves respect. This is not only true of microwave ovens. Gas ovens can also serve as naked flame sources, and leaked gas can be poisonous, flammable and even explosive.

8. If you appear to be sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, then reducing exposure to all such radiation is a good idea. One way to do this is to put a Faraday cage (a metal mesh) around where you live - you don't have to travel far from civilization if you do this.

I am not saying that microwave ovens are safe, but I am saying that they are not as dangerous as many would have us believe. I am personally more worried about pervasive plastics in society and toxin outgassing, including toxins from vehicle exhausts. I am also worried about power substations and cell phone towers, particularly that microwave relays and the like are being installed pervasively throughout cities. Microwave ovens are not particularly dangerous when used carefully, which is more than I can say about most plastic containers that many use in microwaves.

Bye
Alex

Microwave were not invented by the Nazis.....

Hi Jeffy14, from the wikipedia:

The first simple, two-pole magnetron was developed in 1920 by Albert Hull[6] at General Electric's Research Laboratories (Schenectady, New York), as an outgrowth of his work on the magnetic control of vacuum tubes in an attempt to work around the patents held by Lee De Forest on electrostatic control.

This means the core mechanism of a microwave oven is an American invention.

Bye
Alex

Doesn't matter where it came from, anyone who actually believes that microwaving food is safe still thinks the world is flat. You think the epidemic of acid reflux is an accident? A coincidence? A fluke? What do you think is causing the damage to your digestive system? When all else fails, check the obvious. The food packaging they have us cook with, not just for microwaving, but boiling. How about all those plastic boil in the bag foods?

What you eat and how it was prepared and what it was packaged in has a significant impact on your health. If the food came from poor soil, or contaminated or GMO stuff to begin with, right there, that will damage your health. So then if you take that and you mutate it and irradiate it in an microwave oven, you are just cooking yourself toxic.

The same goes for cooking with nonstick cookware. The junk used on your pots and pans shows up in your blood. It also gives off a toxin when you cook and breathe that in in your kitchen. So we get poisoned from that.

If you use styrofoam cups or plates for anything, you get styrene poisoning. Or if you happen to like to use aluminum foil, you can aluminum poisoning.

My point is, we are being poisoned and toxin'd to death every single day because we are not eating pure foods the way nature intended them to be. It causes physical illness. We are not a healthy population. And this is a major reason why.

Hi carrigon, I don't boil food in a bag either, plastics toxicology is still in its infancy. Sure there are plastics that are called microwave safe and so on, but we might know different in ten years. The same goes for plastic containers. I prefer glass containers where I can get them, and I heat things in pyrex not plastic. Nonstick cookware is safe at low temperatures, but the science has indicated that at higher temperatures it can be toxic - a point the manufacturers don't like to advertise. Aluminium poisoning is rare though, usually only occurs in industrial accidents or if you consume a lot of acidic food. Cooking high acid foods in aluminium is about the only way it can be both mobilized and absorbed to any degree. Much of the research on aluminium causing problems was wrong, but I have not checked the research in the last 11 years, so I don't know what has been discovered lately.

Bye
Alex

PS I think a big problem with the modern diet is micronutrient depletion. Soils get depleted of many minerals, but we only tend to replace this with phosphate and nitrogen. Such soils are less and less fit for growing crops over time unless something is done to reverse the problem.