mood: radioactive
music: Jonathan Coulton – Re: Your Brains
Bet that got your attention.
Like many American households, you probably own a microwave oven, and use to thaw the occasional TV or warm up that two-day old jelly doughnut at 2 AM. And if you are like a majority of Americans, you’ve probably been exposed to the claims made by various groups that claim a wide variety of horrible maladies are headed your way if you eat food cooked in a microwave. Your blood hemoglobin levels will drop, your food will turn cancerous, and your hair will fall out. Some of the claims use scientific-sounding language and cite studies that describe some seriously scary medical stuff that can happen from eating microwave-prepared food. Here’s just a sample of what I found with a quick Google search:
- 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.
- Creation of a “binding effect” to radioactivity in the atmosphere, thus causing a marked increase in the amount of alpha and beta particle saturation in foods.
- Microwave exposure caused significant decreases in the nutritional
value of all foods studied.
- Microwaving foods alters their elemental food substances, leading
to disorders in the digestive system.
- The use of microwave ovens was banned in Russia in 1976.
There’s even a wonderful series of pictures showing what happens to plants when they’re given just microwaved water. The first picture shows two healthy potted plants, which are labeled “microwaved water only” and “purified water only”. Over the course of six pictures, we are shown a dramatic and dismal degradation of the “microwaved water only” plant. The final picture, labeled “Day nine” shows the plant that received only microwaved water is now just a shriveled stump of brown twigs. Weather through the introduction of harmful radiation, or cancerous elemental changes in the water, the microwaved water wilted the plant faster than a straight shot of RoundUp.
…right?
At least some of the fear regarding microwave ovens stems from a misunderstanding of the heating methods involved. In particular, there is a huge dearth of misunderstanding about the “radiation” that microwaves use to cook food. The radiation most people are familiar with is the dangerous radiation released in nuclear power plant incidents like Chernobyl or Three Mile island. That radiation is ionizing radiation, that is, it carries enough energy to strip electrons from atoms and electrons – a process called ionization. Ionizing radiation can cause genetic damage, skin burns and cancer. But microwave ovens use (you guessed it!) microwaves to heat food. Microwaves are non-ionizing radiation – they have none of the harmful effects of ionizing radiation.
Microwave ovens work by a process called dielectric heating, which passes microwaves over and through the food, usually at a frequency of about 2.45 gigahertz. The microwaves cause the water in the food to flip back and forth very very quickly, and the friction produced by movement of the molecules moving against each other causes heat, which cooks the food. Fats, sugars, and frozen water are far less polar (the difference between their positive and negative “sides” is less pronounced) and therefore they are relatively unaffected by microwaves. That’s it. There’s no mysterious radioactive magic spewing rays of death in there. Microwaves work by heating water through friction.
The entire microwave oven scare is based around the idea that microwaving water somehow changes its chemical structure or otherwise creates unnatural or toxic compounds in it. But this is demonstrably false – water is always H2O, whether you heated it on the stove or in a microwave. Not since 1947 when Radarrange made the world’s very first microwave oven has anybody exhibited any sickness or symptom resulting from eating microwaved food or drinking microwaved water. Burns are another matter, but stoves and candles burn, too – they’re not unique to microwaves. If the fringe claims made about microwave ovens are true, then nearly everybody on the planet should be gravely ill with all sorts of microwave-caused maladies.
Where did all these rumors come from? Much of the misinformation comes from a study published by Swiss food chemist Hans Hertel. The Swiss food chemist and seven fellow vegetarians confined themselves to a hotel for two months in the late 1980s. There, they consumed milk and vegetables prepared in the microwave oven and in other ways. At the end of the study, they made a remarkable announcement: Eating microwaved milk and vegetables caused changes in the mens blood that “appear to indicate the initial stage of a pathological process such as occurs at the start of a cancerous condition.”
The problem with Hans’ “study” is that it was never peer-reviewed or published in a scientific journal. There is no way of knowing what his study consisted of, what his methods were, what he measured or how he measured it, making it impossible to evaluate his findings.
The fact of the matter is that any sort of application of heat alters the nutritional content of food. In fact, other methods of heating, such as boiling, actually destroy more nutrients than microwaving, because the nutrients leech into the water and a more intense heat is used.
Hertel has dropped out of the public eye, but the unsubstantiated charges that he made continue to circulate around the internet in mass-emails with alarming subject lines and lots of capital letters. There are no peer-reviewed scientific articles that warn of bizarre cancer-causing agents released as a result of microwaving foods. As mentioned previously, the biggest danger in using microwave ovens is the possibility of burns from uneven heating and overheating, especially in baby bottles, which is why you should be extra-careful when warming formula or milk for babies in the microwave.
The internet is full of all sorts of dubious, scientific-sounding but unfounded medical advice. The misinformation about microwaves exploits our fears about radiation by making us wonder about the safety of our families – who doesn’t want to keep their families and children safe? Billions of people have been eating microwaved foods for decades with no demonstrable ill effects. When you see a wild, far-out story that makes dubious claims about how the world works, look at it with a skeptical eye.
Sources:
(Note: this is not intended to be a comprehensive list. The scientific articles cited are not generally available for free online, you’ll have to visit your local library (if they them) or your local hospital for access to the medical journal articles. If you want the article I used for a specific claim, ask and I’ll try to find who I cited.)
Behavioral teratologic studies using microwave radiation: is there an increased risk from exposure to cellular phones and microwave ovens?, PubMed.
Microwave heating of infant formula: a dilemma resolved, PubMed
The Hidden Hazards Of Microwave Cooking
Russia Banned Microwave Ovens in 1976
Radiation Ovens
Plastic-Tac-Toe
Exit, stage left.
Sparks