Microwaves cause cancer

[Raider5678]

Hey everyone

Recently somebody told me that microwaves cause cancer because they use radiation to cook the food. He said that since radiation causes cancer then "logically"(improper use of logic) microwaves cause cancer, and that it was a government conspiracy blah blah blah. Either way in a week 3 MORE people have said it, different stories behind the thing but the same basic principle, radiation causes cancer so microwaves cause cancer. So I looked it up, and lots and lots of people are saying it. I looked up how it works and it says it uses radio waves at a set frequency to agitate water molecules. This causes them to vibrate and cause friction, which cooks your food. This in no way seems like it's going to cause cancer. I also found that radiation comes in 2 forms, Electromagnetic and nuclear. Nuclear is ionizing, which means it rips off ions, and electromagnetic isn't ionizing(except some forms.) Now my question is did I miss something that proves microwaves cause cancer? All the sites I read that say it causes cancer don't explain how it cooks food properly, only saying stuff like "it uses harmful radiation" or "it completely destroys nutrients" or "rips apart the cells in the food, releasing toxins that cause cancer"(what the heck??? more insight please) Now am I correct that this is just the work of people not bothering to look into how it works or did I miss some vital information?

[StringJunky]

No,you haven't missed anything, it's crap. Microwaves are non-ionising. You've got to get to Far-UV before it is ionising.

 

 

Non-ionizing (or non-ionising) radiation refers to any type of electromagnetic radiation that does not carry enough energy per quantum (photon energy) to ionize atoms or molecules—that is, to completely remove an electron from an atom or molecule.^[1] Instead of producing charged ions when passing through matter, the electromagnetic radiation has sufficient energy only for excitation, the movement of an electron to a higher energy state. Ionizing radiation which has a higher frequency and shorter wavelength than nonionizing radiation, has many uses but can be a health hazard; exposure to it can cause burns, radiation sickness, cancer and genetic damage.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-ionizing_radiation

Edited April 8, 2016 by StringJunky

[Greg H.]

Microwaves can be harmful, which is why the doors have those little grilles in them. Not because of harmful nuclear radiation, but because they will cause burns from heating up the water and fat in your body (which is what it does to your food too). The little grilles have holes spaced closer together than the wavelength of the microwave, which lets you see in (because light has a shorter wavelength) but stops the microwaves from getting out by disrupting them at the grille. In general, the shorter the wavelength of an electromagnetic wave, the less dangerous it is, though all of them can be dangerous through prolonged exposure (how long depends on the frequency of the wave) and how it affects the body in the first place. Radio waves aren't that dangerous (unless the power level is really high, and you're really close). We're literally swimming through a sea of them just being alive. Gamma rays, on the other hand, will straight up kill you with very little exposure due to their much higher energy levels.

 

As far as Electromagnetic radiation goes, light is also electromagnetic radiation, and it can also be harmful if it's too bright and the exposure is too long (staring at the sun, snowblindness, etc). But in reality, people are bathed in microwaves (and their slower cousins, radio waves) all the time. Frankly, you're more likely to get hurt by eating food that's too hot

[swansont]

Some nuclear radiation is electromagnetic radiation. Radiation is any energetic particle given off, so it can be the neutrons, protons, alphas, betas and neutrinos given off in nuclear interactions but also the gammas, which are electromagnetic.

 

The thing is, visible light is radiation, too. So is infra-red, and radio waves. Are they afraid of light bulbs? You used to be able to cook food with a 100W light bulb (E-Z Bake ovens, back when incandescents gave off a lot of waste heat). Any material with a temperature gives off radiation. That includes people — it's mainly in the infrared part of the spectrum. Several hundred watts (you also absorb background radiation, too. The net emission is about 100 W)

 

So this is just an ignorant knee-jerk reaction to the word radiation.

[foxy john]

Raider5678, I don't think you missed anything. That 'someone' doesn't know the difference between types of radiation and in general doesn't know much about cooking food, they are talking rubbish.

As an aside:- do the people who are worried about it use mobile phones? You can always fight back by saying they use radiation.

[swansont]

Gamma rays, on the other hand, will straight up kill you with very little exposure due to their much higher energy levels.

 

As far as Electromagnetic radiation goes, light is also electromagnetic radiation, and it can also be harmful if it's too bright and the exposure is too long (staring at the sun, snowblindness, etc). But in reality, people are bathed in microwaves (and their slower cousins, radio waves) all the time. Frankly, you're more likely to get hurt by eating food that's too hot

 

As with much of science, you need to quantify things. A chest x-ray is not going to kill you. You have radioactive sources inside your own body (charged particles are worse than gammas of the same energy)

 

Also, radio waves are not slower than microwaves.

[Xalatan]

To induce cancer the EMR has to induce genetic damage and mutations. For example, UVB causes thymine dimers and cross-links nitrogenous bases of nucleotides. This requires high energy EMR that is able to penetrate tissue to reach the genetic material. Microwave is sitting on the wrong end of the EM spectrum with its long wavelength and lower energy. It doesn't make a case esp compared to the likes of UVC, X ray, gamma ray.

[Enthalpy]

At least one study found an increase in parotid gland cancer related with the use of cell phones.

By Rakefet Czerninski, Avi Zini and Harold Sgan-Cohen at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine.

 

The topic, which was heavily debated before any hard evidence existed, then vanished from the public place, for reasons I ignore.

 

Be careful with logics like "not ionizing hence no cancer". Mankind ignores nearly everything about biology and medicine, so such reasonings fail often. It's more prudent to stick to the experimental approach.

[Raider5678]

At least one study found an increase in parotid gland cancer related with the use of cell phones.

By Rakefet Czerninski, Avi Zini and Harold Sgan-Cohen at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine.

 

The topic, which was heavily debated before any hard evidence existed, then vanished from the public place, for reasons I ignore.

 

Be careful with logics like "not ionizing hence no cancer". Mankind ignores nearly everything about biology and medicine, so such reasonings fail often. It's more prudent to stick to the experimental approach.

True, but what would have cell phones cause parotid cancer? The electromagnetic radiation shouldn't, except I don't know ANYTHING about biology.

[swansont]

At least one study found an increase in parotid gland cancer related with the use of cell phones.

By Rakefet Czerninski, Avi Zini and Harold Sgan-Cohen at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the Hadassah School of Dental Medicine.

 

Which should be thoroughly unsurprising. One should expect about 5% of studies to show false positives, given the standard for medical research.

 

Be careful with logics like "not ionizing hence no cancer". Mankind ignores nearly everything about biology and medicine, so such reasonings fail often. It's more prudent to stick to the experimental approach.

But we do need a mechanism, and we're talking about a subset of mankind that does pay attention to biology and medicine (and chemistry and physics), so that point is moot.

[Jordan90]

Radiation causes permanent and non-permanent changes inside and among molecule structures that result to all sort of chain reactions. Small alterations that could not even be effecting the atoms in a molecule but rather how they are bind together (like their position in space or electron structure) is enough to cause abnormality/unusual responses as far as the metabolism goes (ex. trans-lipids). This of course is my general knowledge Im trying to say only things I could strongly back-up, I cant really state that I know how the micro-waves would be effecting the food and if there is actually danger, though I would fear it for the time be.

 

Its not just as simple as it sounds and apparently no one here has provided us with depth-full insight on the effect of microwaves on food. I know Russia has banned microwaves for being dangerous to public health. I do know that radiation like that of cell-phones could alter the nature of our cells or even damaged them (like when you talk on the phone) causing weird situations to practice you're normal homeostasis over. This is a deep biochemistry topic, would love to see some expertise talk. Anyhow I would not use this technology at home, I prefer other forms of food processing when having to for all that matters. Microwaves are being used as an alternative to heat processing when it is considered less harming to the quality of the food and more cost efficient in the industry field. Of course its been thousands of years that our bodies are adjusted to consuming/metabolizing raw and heated chemical structures from food sources I go for those in seeking for the best food to eat to maintain maximum vitality.

[swansont]

Radiation causes permanent and non-permanent changes inside and among molecule structures that result to all sort of chain reactions. Small alterations that could not even be effecting the atoms in a molecule but rather how they are bind together (like their position in space or electron structure) is enough to cause abnormality/unusual responses as far as the metabolism goes (ex. trans-lipids). This of course is my general knowledge Im trying to say only things I could strongly back-up, I cant really state that I know how the micro-waves would be effecting the food and if there is actually danger, though I would fear it for the time be.

 

Its not just as simple as it sounds and apparently no one here has provided us with depth-full insight on the effect of microwaves on food. I know Russia has banned microwaves for being dangerous to public health. I do know that radiation like that of cell-phones could alter the nature of our cells or even damaged them (like when you talk on the phone) causing weird situations to practice you're normal homeostasis over. This is a deep biochemistry topic, would love to see some expertise talk. Anyhow I would not use this technology at home, I prefer other forms of food processing when having to for all that matters. Microwaves are being used as an alternative to heat processing when it is considered less harming to the quality of the food and more cost efficient in the industry field. Of course its been thousands of years that our bodies are adjusted to consuming/metabolizing raw and heated chemical structures from food sources I go for those in seeking for the best food to eat to maintain maximum vitality.

 

 

 

If you can back any of this up, as you claim, then please do so. Because this whole thing screams "Citation Needed!"

[John Cuthber]

...Im trying to say only things I could strongly back-up,

 

Russia has banned microwaves for being dangerous to public health.

Try harder

No it hasn't

[Greg H.]

 

As with much of science, you need to quantify things. A chest x-ray is not going to kill you. You have radioactive sources inside your own body (charged particles are worse than gammas of the same energy)

 

Also, radio waves are not slower than microwaves.

You're right of, course.

 

And slower here is used as a layman's term meaning "of lower frequency". Velocity wise, of course, they all travel at the same speed. I should have been more precise.

[Enthalpy]

True, but what would have cell phones cause parotid cancer? The electromagnetic radiation shouldn't, except I don't know ANYTHING about biology.

 

 

But we do need a mechanism, and we're talking about a subset of mankind that does pay attention to biology and medicine (and chemistry and physics), so that point is moot.

 

This way of thinking is extraordinarily immodest, even more so with biology, and can only lead to mistakes.

 

Even in better established science, refusing an experimental result because you don't understand how it happens would be a mistake. How could this possibly be done in biology, where so little is known?

 

10 years ago, all cells of a body were supposed to carry exactly the same DNA. 35 years ago, prions didn't exist. 60 years ago, human retroviruses didn't exist. This was universal knowledge then (and rather dogmatic in the case of medicine). The combination of several viruses is recent, as well as the natural injection by viruses of one species' DNA fragment in an other species' DNA. How many observations would you have wrongly rejected then for being unexplainable?

 

As for the study about parotid cancer, it has been repeated and confirmed.

[swansont]

Repeated and confirmed doesn't jibe with your statement about one study. So, which is it?

[CharonY]

In biology we need rather overwhelming data in the absence of mechanistic explanations. However, the the cited authors did not conduct a study linking the cancer to cellphones, rather they just saw an increase in incidence. They speculate about cell phones, which does not carry a lot of weight. They cite other studies which showed no effects as well as a study on Israeli population that actually had a potential link.

Yet newer studies with similar designs were unable to reproduce the link. It has spawned a number of other studies which tried to re-create a potential effect in vitro, using tissues and similar or higher radiation levels, which were also found to be negative.

 

There are two meta-analysis studies that actually show that there may be an increased tumor risk (though of a different kind), and a few more that did not find a link.

As swansont mentioned, as long as we do not have an idea what the link is, we need way more than that to ascertain that there is actually something connected to a specific event (i.e. cell phone use) rather than some other confounding factor. It should be noted that there are animal studies under way that may implicate non-DNA damaging mechanisms of cell phone radiation, but they are still in relatively early stages.