Is the use of microwaves harmful to our healths?

Question

Serious answers only please.

Is the following actually true?

1. People who ingested microwaved foods showed a statistically higher
incidence of stomach and intestinal cancers, plus a general
degeneration of peripheral cellular tissues and a gradual breakdown
of the function of the digestive and excretory systems.

2. Due to chemical alterations within food substances, malfunctions
occurred within the lymphatic system, causing a degeneration in the
immune system's ability to protect the body against neoplastic
(cancerous) growth.

3. Microwave exposure caused significant decreases in the nutritional
value of all foods studied, most significantly in the
bio-availability of Bcomplex vitamins, vitamin C, vitamin E,
essential minerals and lipotropics (substances that prevent abnormal
accumulation of fat).

4. Heating prepared meats in a microwave sufficiently for human
consumption creates the cancer-causing agent d-nitrosodiethanolamine.

5. Cancer-causing free radicals were formed within certain
trace-mineral, molecular formations in plant substances --
particularly in raw root vegetables.

6. Ingestion of microwaved foods caused a higher percentage of
cancerous cells within the blood serum.

7. Microwaving foods alters their elemental food substances, leading
to disorders in the digestive system

Answer 1

Bo,

People say these kinds of things because they don't know how radio works, or what happens when one kind of nonionizing energy enters a substance.

Take it from someone who's studied and used radios--the transmitting kind--since the late 70s: it just doesn't work that way.

A microwave is really just a high-powered radio transmitter. The cooking property of microwaves was discovered by Percy Spencer for Raytheon working on radar in 1946. A chocolate bar melted in his pocket, and he began to investigate why that happened.

Thus was born (eventually) the Amana Radarange.

Well, what happens when nonionizing energy (energy lower than X-rays and nuclear particles) enters any substance? The molecules, usually the electrons but sometimes the protons, absorb some of the energy and then retransmit it at characteristic frequencies.

The frequencies of microwave ovens are around 2.5 gigaherz, which are absorbed by water, sugar, and fats, but not well by ceramics and plastics. The electrons absorb the radio energy and then, because unlike people they don't like to be excited, they retransmit that energy at infrared frequencies. At teh same time, because this energy is being absorbed, the molecules are forced to move really, really fast. All this creates heat--the infrared, the molecular ocscillations--which cooks the food.

As a result, the food isn't really cooked by microwaves, it's cooked by heat, which is why it's hot when you take it out of the oven.

Therefore, food cooked in the microwave will be cooked in exactly the same way with exactly the same changes in it that a conventional oven or an open fire for that matter will cause. It'll do it slightly differently because the heat penetrates a little more deeply than conventional cooking, but not much, and there isn't hot air on the outside so it won't make a bread crust the same way, but it will cook, and it'll do no more to food than a normal oven does.

Let's take your questions one at a time:

1. No. Microwave ovens have been in wide use since the 1970s, and there simply isn't any evidence of an increase in cancer of any kind. In fact, "general breakdown of peripheral tissues" is a dumbfounding claim, because while we know what happens in various peripheral neuropathies, nonionizing radiation is not one of them. We've had them for over 30 years, and nothing bad has happened to us because of them. It didn't take nearly that long to find out about Vioxx, did it?

Please understand that there's a huge difference between ionizing and nonionizing radiation. You get far more dangerous radiation, because it's ionizing (it's high enough energy that it can and will knock electrons out of the atoms, thus giving them a charge and turning them into "ions," which are just charged atoms) and you're out in it much longer, just going outside. UV radiation is much worse than microwave radiation, yet we do not fear it.

All microwave oven radiation does is heat food and cook it.

2. No. Radio waves do not damage the lymph system. There have been no cancers of any kind caused by microwaves nor by any chemical changes in food heated by microwaves.

Have you found any description of these chemical changes? I haven't. Nobody's found any in any research, so what we hear is from people who repeat what someone else has said, but it's all without any laboratory or even epidemiological evidence.

3. What you describe here can be said of boiling or roasting, too. how often have we been told to boil vegetables in as little water as possible because it will leach vitamins out of them?

We seem to forget that every form of cooking changes the chemical structure of a substance. The question is, is it a change that will cause a problem? The answer is no, as long as you don't burn it over an open fire. Last I heard, microwaves don't have too many open flames in them.

4. No.This is a danger of grilling, not microwaving. Sure, if you burn meat that has been preserved, not just heat it, it does form these chemicals, but not boiling it, not heating it in an oven, and not microwaving it.

5. Good heavens--we form free radicals in our bodies by breathing and moving. Microwaving food does not form free radicals because it takes a chemical destruction and rebuilding to do that. All aerobic metabolism does this, but microwaving does not. We forget that what free radiacl production involves is oxygen, not microwaves. All we have to do is breathe in oxygen, and this very reactive gas very readily combines with all manner of other chemicals to form all sorts of metabolic products, including free radicals that damage our DNA. That's why our bodies are so very good at scavenging them. That's what a vegetable-based diet is for--it gives us the most vitamins and antioxidents that we use to protect us against them.

The main problem here is the standard western diet, meat-heavy and vegetable-poor, not microwaves.

6. No. Do you know of any research that shows this? Neither do I.

7. When was the last time that you or anyone else had a digestive system disorder (whatever those are) caused by a microwave? Irritable Bowel Syndrome occurs in the absence of a microwave oven, as does Crohn's Disease. Bacteria cause diarrhea, not microwaves.

Notice that all of these claims do not have evidence to back them up?

Microwaves cannot cause cancer because they do not damage DNA. They are not ionizing. Even the heat they cause is nothing compared to the heat we get from sunbathing or living in Phoenix or Brownsville.

We get many cancers from our diets and failure to exercise, but not from our microwave ovens.

How many people do you know have microwave ovens? How many of them have these kinds of disorders? Where do people get the statistics--actually, I haven't seen any real statistics on this--to support their claims that microwave ovens cause these kinds of diseases?

Microwave ovens are used all over the world. If they caused the problems claimed by some people, the world would be awash in cancers never seen before at rates never seen before. But we aren't. We have cancers, yes, but we know that they come from too much fat, too much protein, too much calcium, too much weight, too many chemicals, too much pollution, and too little exercise.

Eat low fat, high vegetable, and use a microwave in good health and conscience.

Answer 2

It may be true, but the occasional use of a microwave would not harm your health and cause cancer. Unless of course a person has a pacemaker. You shouldn't be concerned so much as to the effects of microwaving at home because companies now use radiation to steralize and or pastuerize some foods prior to marketing.

Answer 3

It seems to be a favourite pastime with some people to terrorise others by plastering over the Internet that such and such will give us cancer. (I call these people cyber-terrorirsts, but they could be just mentally sick.) Eating meat, they tell us, gives us cancer. So does dairy food. Ergo, we should be vegetarians or (better still) vegans. Yet vegetarians and vegans BOTH get cancer. Steve Jobs wasn't just a vegan but was also paranoid enough about what he ate to insist that everything should be organically grown, yet he died of cancer at a surprisingly young age. My husband won't let me use a microwave and insists the wifi be switched off when not used. So, of course, I never get to use it except when my sister needs it for her iPad; my own iPad might just as well be a toy for playing games on. He even said microwaves were so bad for us they were banned in Russia. I scratched my head in puzzlement at such a sweeping statement. I thought Russia was supposed to be a democracy, I told myself, but, knowing my husband is an intelligent man, figured he wouldn't have accepted such a statement without investigating. But eventually I did my own investigation. Typing into Google the statement that microwaves were banned in Russia introduced me in less than a second to dozens of irate English speaking Russians and English speaking people living in Russia.

Answer 4

Yes it's true but come on- everything is harmful nowadays!

Oh but here's an interesting fact- I learned in my child psych seminar that pregnant women are advised not to stand within 5 feet of an operating microwave because the radiations are harmful to the infant in the uterus! I thought that was funny. But apparently true if I'm learning about it in college, right?

Answer 5

I think use of microwaves has advantages and disadvantages both.If you have food you away from home it can help you to make food warm and you can have taste of fresh food. Microwave is useful when you have to cook food person or two. But in party or family gathering you cannot cook the whole food it going to be double the time and your bills as well.You can read a interesting article here http://largearticle.com/pros-and-cons-of-using-microwave-oven-at-home/

Answer 6

All of thse have been unsubstantiated claims by people who think everything we put in our mouths will kill us. I'm from the era that cranberries were cancer causing...this at Thanksgiving! Microwave ovens have been around for over 30 years and no one case has ever come to court or been proven to have caused a carcinogenic disease.

Answer 7

In older microwaves...probably...but newer ones...no. Who cares any way? I'm not afraid of pain or death...it has to happen SOMETIME after all...I might as well fix some food in my microwave and then get on with what's left of my life...

Answer 8

Microwaves are nothing but radio waves; they act on the molecules in food that respond to the particular frequency of the wave by moving it faster; they do not change the foods' molecular structure.

Answer 9

No. Microwave is nothing to do with health.

Answer 10

I think studies have shown that is a myth, but there is a new riot control weapon that uses "microwave technologly" so who really knows.