Are Microwave Ovens Safe?

And I thought this episode was going to be an homage to Frank Zappa's "The Dangerous Kitchen"!

J. D., Silver Spring
December 28, 2007 3:57pm

Another great podcast, Brian. It is frustrating to me when people romanticize the "good-old days": cherry-picking points they like about any given time and neglecting the downsides to that period while, conversely, comparing their golden age to all the negative aspects of our modern existence while avoiding the mention of the many benefits to living in our modern era. The "microwave militia", the "organic outfitters", the "cut-the-cars commandos" and the religious moralists all seem to pine for a time when their held values were, because of the lack of any options, the standard. I love living in our modern age, even complete with its problems (which we seem more and more capable to deal with as we progress). Thanks for holding a torch of reason against the darkness spewed by fear-mongering, anti-technology, superstitious nostalgists.

Shawn, London (Ontario)
January 01, 2008 11:34am

Great podcast! I had heard not heard the plant story from snopes, but there is another story that circulates on sites promoting "alternative medicine," "natural cures" and the like. The other story claims that seeds soaked in microwave-heated water will not germinate. Though it seemed obvious to me that this was not incorrect, I did an experiment anyway and of course all three sets of seeds fared the same.
But here comes what raises a question for me. My father's wife, who is a practitioner of various kinds of alternative medicine, does not allow anyone to use the microwave. I never asked why, but can make some guesses. I mentioned my seed experiment to her and her response is "Western thinking doesn't explain this". Can you suggest a good response to a comment like that?

Maggie Owens, New York City
January 03, 2008 11:28am

Maggie, what if you mentioned that rational thinking isn't exclusively 'western'?

I have encountered a different type of microwave fear--not fear of the food that comes out of them, but fear of the oven while in operation. Usually that waves are leaking out and somehow injuring bystanders. I don't mention to these people that our home has wi-fi, a cordless phone, and a baby monitor too...i'm sure they'd never visit again, with all those 'waves' waving about...

Molly, Cambridge MA
January 04, 2008 9:49am

Is it true that minerals remains the same but phytochemical's value
decrease with microwaving?
Your answer will be highly appreciated.
Thank you.

wann, Salinas, Calif
February 17, 2008 12:30pm

Molly, thanks for the comment on radiation emitted while microwave in operation. I’ve wondered about this after being told women are advised not to use microwaves while pregnant.

I found the below comment in a WebMD article: http://www.webmd.com/baby/guide/separating-pregnancy-myths-and-facts

"No good science shows microwaves harm the fetus."

This makes me feel better. But I will continue to refrain from placing my forehead against the window to watch the food cook as I did in my youth.

Ryan Sjaarda, Hoboken, NJ
April 04, 2008 8:51pm

I was pregnant. but it leads to miscarriage due to electric oven i think.Because i put chellies in the oven then it leads me cough which brings two blood spot.

mathusudhan, bangalore
May 31, 2008 9:31am

(yes I am just catching up by listening to your podcasts)

There was a discussion on this in the Science/Math section of the JREF forums a while back. One thing I remember was that the photos of the two plants in the microwave water warning were photoshopped. I think this is mentioned in other sites debunking the myth.

I found the link to the discussion, where it is shown that some photos were edited:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=55420

HCN, Wacky Washington Way out West
August 31, 2008 10:53am

Actually there is a small danger about microwave-heated water that you kind of glanced over. It's easier to burn yourself with microwave-heated water, not because the water is any different, but because sometimes microwave heated water doesn't "look" hot to us as kettle-heated water is. Depending on the container you heat it in, the water might be significantly hotter than the container, or might be very hot without visibly bubbling. With a stovetop, your hand can feel the heat as you reach to grab the pot or kettle. With a microwave, you might not notice how hot the water is until you spill it on yourself.

It's nothing magical. The only difference is that you should be more careful. Remember that the water might be hotter than it looks.

This might only effect people who use microwave ovens infrequently and aren't used to them.

Paul, Walnut Creek, CA
October 12, 2008 6:11pm

let the microwaved water cool before watering plants or putting on seeds then there should be no problems.apologies to those already aware of this precaution.

roy, ontario
November 07, 2008 6:03pm

I will takes my chances to be inconvenienced not to use a microwave and see who has better health when I get old.

john, atlanta
December 11, 2008 9:02pm

Futhermore, even though microwave energy cannot cause radiolysis, it CAN AND DOES cause electrolysis. Perhaps not in pure water, but food is very very complex. Food contains thousands of compounds, some of which are stable enough to withstand such energy, but many are not. Thus many electrolytic reactions happen, breaking nutrients down into foreign, potentially toxic compounds. Those reactions DO NOT HAPPEN on a stove. They are not caused by heat, they are caused by electrons forced to flow - forced to flow by very intense electromagnetic energy. Yes it's simple electromagnetic induction! Anything you put in a microwave that can conduct electricity will have currents induced. Just like you cannot split water into hydrogen and oxygen by boiling it, but you can indeed split them up with some dissolved solids, electrodes and an electric current! All those ingredients are present in food, on molecular level - for all you know you are creating a little bit of hydrogen when the microwave hits that salty pickle on your pizza.. and that's just one of the things you are creating!

Percy, Cape Town
December 22, 2008 3:24pm

A friend of mine recently posted this on their FB page:

Your Microwave Is Killing You!
http://www.relfe.com/microwave.html

Shawn G., CNY
February 20, 2009 5:15pm

I agree that microwavable food probably does not cause detrimental effects for the time that a human being lives on this earth, but I do think that it can alter the way your body looks physically. For example, more wrinkles, drier skin, and maybe slight emotional imbalance/decreased intelligence. You take your chances, convenience vs. trying to take care of your body the best you can. If you don't care, then by all means microwave away! I ate a fried rice once that tasted way better the next day AFTER it was microwaved! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Janice, London
March 20, 2009 8:27am

I have been microwaving water for my tea (nearly every day) for the last 20 years and I don't think that it's made me much 'stupider'. Hehehe!

Just for the record, I repair robotics for a living.

Darin, Hollywood, CA
March 25, 2009 7:24pm

I have the same microwave that I bought in 1983. It is 26 years old. I do everything in it. I am about to turn 65 and in the best of health. So much for scaremongering.

Gail, Clear Lake, Manitoba
May 15, 2009 12:18pm

With so many things becoming more harmful to us each day, I try to do my best, and wether the science is there or not I still chose to avoid the Microwave.

Tyson Pitre, Moncton / New Brunswick
May 25, 2009 12:29pm

Janet said

""I agree that microwavable food probably does not cause detrimental effects for the time that a human being lives on this earth, but I do think that it can alter the way your body looks physically. For example, more wrinkles, drier skin, and maybe slight emotional imbalance/decreased intelligence.""

Have you got any evidence that it changes the way people look, or an explanation for why???? Why are you here?

irritated, mars
May 29, 2009 8:23pm

There needn't be a problem between faith and science, as long as both are used appropriately. Medical and scientific claims are provable and repeatable, and ideas are just ideas. There is a difference, and this is the province of science. I grow peevish at the blind acceptance of unsubstantiated notions that are passed of as science, and even breakthroughs. There is a place for thinking outside the box, and there is a place for requiring proof of a claim. This microwave melée is another example of the former substituting the the latter.

Bobbo, Orlando, FL
June 18, 2009 1:30pm

I will continue to avoid the microwave. Rather cook and enjoy the art of cooking rather than speed up the process and possibly lose nutrients.

Hey NCF...youou here on the BIG STAGE!!!

youou, Dickson TN
July 08, 2009 4:51pm

I'm a physicist and I've written a pretty thorough blog (I'll let you draw your own conclusions) about cell phones and microwave ovens. Please check it out:

http://intensive-purposes.blogspot.com/2009/08/will-microwave-radiation-give-you_19.html

Gandolph, VA
August 23, 2009 10:23am

"One clue that might encourage you to regard these claims with some skepticism is that fact that ever since microwave ovens came on the market in 1954, not one person has ever exhibited a single symptom of any illness resulting from having eaten microwaved food,"

Says you, but YOU don't provide any PROOF either.

Unless those other people said it was from day to day it could easily be something which accumulates.

Most people cook the old fashioned way and do it in moderation, I've been eating micro stuff for a decade, and i'm feeling worse and worse, my memory is bad, my concentration is bad etc.

And what do you mean those claims aren't testable? To me they all seem testable.

"The human body cannot metabolize the unknown byproducts created in microwaved food."

That's testable unless they claim the 'unknown byproducts' are non detectable by any human device.

The modus operandi of the west has always been to fail on part of the consumer, never the companies (gotta make money after all).

Unless you can prove something is lethal you can sell it - this is failing on the part of the user.

If you changed the laws so you could only sell something if you could prove it was harmless, then you would be failing on the part of the companies.

But nobody cares, there is money to be made after all. And there are so many humans, if you kill some off there will always be more.

PJ, DK
November 04, 2009 10:33am

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18024182.000-microwave-cooking-zaps-nutrients.html

Peer reviewed paper. I trust the word of a peer reviewed paper over what you say. Anti-oxidants are well known as cancer preventative. Indirectly therefore, it's possible microwaves may 'cause cancer.

Chadzuka, Aussie
December 16, 2009 3:57pm

a woman died in 1991 from a warmed blood transfusion. The blood warmed in teh microwave.
Where do people like you come from?
You must believe everything the government says.

Raine, Palm Beach Florida
December 26, 2009 11:00pm

nice work brian. continue to shine a light on the stupid, the world always needs more sense.

Terry, Australia
December 27, 2009 6:59am

The National Cancer Institute (of the US National Institutes of Health) says that using your microwave to partially precook your muscle meats will reduce your exposure to carcinogenic compounds.

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Risk/heterocyclic-amines

"Meats that are partially cooked in the microwave oven before cooking by other methods also have lower levels of HCAs. Studies have shown that microwaving meat prior to cooking helps to decrease mutagens by removing the precursors. Meats that were microwaved for 2 minutes prior to cooking had a 90-percent decrease in HCA content. In addition, if the liquid that forms during microwaving is poured off before further cooking, the final quantity of HCAs is reduced."

Personally, I adopted a whole-food plant-based diet 4 years ago so HCAs are no longer a concern of mine. I do, however, find my microwave as useful as ever.

Steve Day, Shawnee, KS
January 04, 2010 9:21am

@Raine:

""a woman died in 1991 from a warmed blood transfusion. The blood warmed in teh microwave.""

While no one has ever died from transfusions using blood warmed in other ways. Okay.

""Where do people like you come from?""

What kind of people? People who don't take a anecdotal report of a single death as proof that something is deadly?

""You must believe everything the government says.""
But it's not the government that is saying microwave ovens are safe, it's researchers, so your accusation is pretty much moot.

Safe-Keeper, Norway
January 20, 2010 7:20am

In 1976 Russia made the use of microwaves illegal. This was reversed with Peristroika. Here's the reasoning:

a. Microwaving prepared meats sufficiently to insure sanitary ingestion caused formation of d-Nitrosodienthanolamines, a well-known carcinogen.

b. Microwaving milk and cereal grains converted some of their amino acids into carcinogens.

c. Thawing frozen fruits converted their glucoside and galactoside containing fractions into carcinogenic substances.

d. Extremely short exposure of raw, cooked or frozen vegetables converted their plant alkaloids into carcinogens.

e. Carcinogenic free radicals were formed in microwaved plants, especially root vegetables. Decrease in nutritional value.

Russian researchers also reported a marked acceleration of structural degradation leading to a decreased food value of 60 to 90% in all foods tested. Among the changes observed were:

a. Deceased bio-availability of vitamin B complex, vitamin C, vitamin E, essential minerals and lipotropics factors in all food tested.

b. Various kinds of damaged to many plant substances, such as alkaloids, glucosides, galactosides and nitrilosides.

c. The degradation of nucleo-proteins in meats.

There's no smoking gun here. Microwaves are safe. But the evidence shows that using them produces cancer causing compounds not otherwise found in food. Like cigarettes, they don't kill you today but tomorrow they just might be responsible for disease.

Jeff Prager, Minneapolis, MN
February 22, 2010 2:31am

Raine

The woman died from the blood warmed in the microwave because they cooked the blood. Heating the blood in the microwave caused the blood cells to rupture and these are what killed the patient. The usual way to warm blood is to immerse it in a warm water bath or to use a blood warmer that controls the temprature the blood is exposed to. Microwaving the blood was the equivalant of putting it into boiling water. If you warmed blood in boiling water, that would kill the patient also. So, it wasn't the microwaves that killed the patient, it was the high temperature the blood was heated to.

June Kryk, Washington DC
March 02, 2010 11:55am

The Russians did ban microwaves due to supposed testing of and conclusion that carcinogenic compounds were found in microwaved food. One should know however, that these same compounds are found, even many times in higher amounts when broiled and cooked in other ways. Heat in general induces decomposition and thus can oxidize and change food for the worst. So the lesson here, people should eat more raw foods! Microwaves aren't the real culprit here, its cooking food in general that creates these problems.
Cheers,
-Lagius

Lagius, Minneapolis, MN
April 19, 2010 7:50am

Have you overlooked the effect of microwaves on the food containers people cook in..especially the plastic ones? Do you know for certain that microwaves do not cause plastics to leach chemicals into the food being prepared? Has this even been studied? Also, the asserttion that microwaves are safe because no one has had ill effects is just conjecture. First, just because something might take a long time to kill you, doesn't mean it is safe. Second, it is just as plausible that the illness that finally strikes is regularly and incorrectly attributed to a variety of other factors.

Bob Bell, Newark De
May 19, 2010 4:47pm

Bob,

Microwave-safe plastic containers are designed to be more or less transparent to microwaves so that the waves are absorbed by the food inside, which heats up and by conduction heats the container.
The materials are tested before marketing.
http://www.mayoclinic.org/medical-edge-newspaper-2007/may-07.html

Brian likes the argument that no victim was identified, and used it with respect to water fluoridation and pesticides.

Max, Boston, MA
June 09, 2010 1:50am

Russia banned microwave ovens - yes I'm sure they did, they banned blue jeans and colour televisions too. The Institute for Radio Technology in Kinsk has been closed for decades now and no-one but William Kopp (the instigator of this story) can find any evidence not also linked to blue jeans. The reasons are American, not Russian.

Norma Levitt, the unfortunate lady who died after a blood transfusion, died of a blood clot (see Warner v. Hillcrest Medical Center 1995 OK CIV APP 123, this was a subsequent case but mentions the original one). It is possible (probable) that the blood clot was caused by "cooked" blood, all to easy with the speed of microwave heating, but this was not tested in court.

Regarding the broccoli experiment, the control was steamed for 3.5 mins, the broccoli was microwaved for 5 mins, not really comparable given that the broccoli was being steamed and microwaved at the same time.

Roy from Ontario - your comment was very funny, until I realised that it would actually explain why the microwaved watered plants had died. Now I think it's serious, maybe they really did pour boiling water over the plants, no wonder they died.

Lastly, plastic containers. Yes, a lot of work has been done on these and yes, those that are not marked "microwave safe" (e.g. many take-away containers) may be potentially harmful.

Kiwi-Ian, New Zealand
June 16, 2010 7:46pm

If true, wouldn't you be able to perform some kind of a test on water, and see if it has ever been microwaved?
and that it's possible to detect this damage through any means you choose, there's a million dollars in it for you.

Dear Brian;
I am assuming that by measuring the dissolved gasses in boiled in a microwaved water and boiled in a saucepan water.

Not that it would have any health differences unless you were a fish.

Bruce, Australia
August 14, 2010 9:05pm

Which gasses released by microwave stimulation would be different from heat-stimulated boiling?

Tom H, Kent, UK
August 20, 2010 12:44pm

Don't put plastic wrap over your macaroni and microwave that. The steam created by the microwaves was found to leach dioxin from the plastic, and then drip back onto the food. ... While the list of reasons not to microwave is amusing, it's a straw dog. I'm curious to know about the purported experiments showing that animals fed exclusively on microwaved food did not thrive. I'll bookmark this page and await clarification.

Barton Spring, Austin, Tx
August 25, 2010 5:42pm