Microwaves have become a necessity in our home and our kitchen. They exist in practically every house, whether to boil water, heat milk, cook our favorite pizza or reheat food that has run cold.
These devices, as their name suggests, work on the principle of microwave waves that propagate through food or liquid. The waves vibrate the water molecules inside the food and heat them from the inside out, unlike the conventional ovens that we traditionally used. Remember that the microwave never modifies the chemical composition of food, it only heats it.
Any microwave oven can leak radiation and the reasons can be many. Direct exposure to high levels of microwave radiation can cause health problems due to intense heat, such as burns and also cataracts. While most microwave oven leaks are too small to produce such significant health hazards, any microwave that looks damaged or is more than 10 years old could be dangerous, not because of the leaks, but because the microwave, by As with food, it could overheat us and cause burns. This is the real danger we face when using a microwave, according to the WHO, burns.
Microwaves have frequencies ranging from about 1 billion cycles per second (1 GHz) to 300 times more and have wavelengths (the distance between peaks) of between 30 cm and 1 mm. Inside a microwave oven, microwaves are generated in a piece of technology called a magnetron and transmitted to the metal interior of the microwave oven. Anything that we put inside the device will absorb these rays and heat it.
FDA regulations allow a small amount of leakage over the life of the microwave, from approximately 5 mW / cm2 to approximately 5 cm from the surface of the oven. Radiation itself is not ionizing , so it will not damage DNA, cause mutations, or increase the risk of developing tumors.
Like the WHO, the FDA warns that high microwave exposure can lead to a painful burn. The eyes and testicles would be the most vulnerable organs because they have relatively little blood flow to remove heat. But causing an injury like cataracts to the eye would require a lot of radiation.
Should we be concerned about whether our microwave loses radiation?
The simple answer is no. No way. We are more likely to burn our hands from a glass or cup of hot water than from the radiation from the device itself . At no point will microwave radiation be in a dose high enough to cause us any harm.
Everything you have been able to read about it on social networks is, essentially, fallacies.
For example, you cannot measure if the microwave has a radiation leak by putting your phone inside and trying to call. Whether it sounds or not has nothing to do with microwave radiation leaks . The mobile will ring because microwaves and telephone waves are similar but different . It is false that you can check it this way.
It is also not true that you cannot cook according to what foods in the microwave. Everything you cook in it is safe and has the same nutritional value as if you cooked it traditionally. It doesn’t destroy nutrients or anything like that.
