Can u live without a microwave?!

Can u live without a microwave?

well my dad trash our microwave because of the risk of getting cancer and food posion, it's weird but i'm getting used to it.

People somehow managed to cook food before there was a microwave. Then again, people somehow managed that before there was electricity or natural gas. Before fire... now it gets dicey, unless you count chemical curing like with salt.


If you really want to freak him out, Google for metals and teflons leached into food from cooking on the stove, or cancers from BBQing. :)

But seriously, you should talk to your dad about this. I'm a medical physicist, I know what I'm talking about when it comes to radiation and health. This is one of the classic misunderstandings where people combine a fear of disease and mistrust of technology. We don't understand why we get sick, so we find ways to control this fear in our day to day life. The logic goes: "If I throw out the microwave/TV/cell phone/teflon pan/whatever, I won't get sick."

Here's the thing. I'm not saying technology is always good for you. But if you choose to not use it, you should at least base your decision on the facts, not on rumors or fears. And by facts I mean well-researched studies backed up by experts, not some chain email, random website (*any* idiot can fill up a website with his rants, if you don't believe me, or just for a great laugh, check out http://www.lawoftime.org/ ), or local tv/news story meant to boost ratings rather than inform.

Re "food poison" I assume you mean the myth that microwaving in plastic containers releases poisons. This is FALSE. See Snopes.com http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/coo... for a very easy to read explanation of how this rumor started and why it is not true. That website BTW has lots of great debunkings of all the urban legends circulating. Fun reading for hours, if you're bored. :)

The cancer issue is more complicated. I can point you to lots of short simple write-ups like the New York Times just yesterday at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/10/health... or somewhat longer ones like this Wikipedia entry (skip down to the word 'radiation') at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/microwave_o... - but I'm sure your Dad can point me to lots of sites that rant about the fact that microwaves do emit some low levels of radiation.

We could argue all day long about just how much radiation is leaked, and whether that amount might cause cancer. But I have a much simpler point. Living on this planet entails a certain amount of risk. You can never be perfectly safe. You will get more radiation from an airplane flight or skiing in the Rockies! (And I'm not talking about wimpy radio frequency stuff like microwaves, I'm talking about real ionizing radiation proven to cause cancer.)

Now all that said, you can do commonsense things to limit what little risk there is. Radiation falls off with the "inverse square law", this means if you double the distance, you cut the exposure to 1/4. So just take a step back when microwaving and any radiation becomes much less. If it really bugs you, walk across the room. At that point, the microwave could be running with an open door and you would barely be getting any dose.

Likewise, if you're worried about your old microwave "leaking" radiation, well go ahead and get a new one! It'll also save energy, cook faster and more evenly, etc. so it's a win-win situation.

Or you could throw out your cell phone, microwave, TV, computer, as they all emit radiation (anything that they make you turn off on the plane), stay away from every indoor business area (hello, WiFi equals radiation!), etc. until you find yourself back in the stone age. You'll unfortunately still get sick from something and die, we all do eventually, the only sure thing about life is that it ends one day, but you'll lead a simpler life and use a lot less electricity, which I guess is good for the planet.