home *** CD-ROM | disk | FTP | other *** search
- Xref: sparky sci.physics:13636 sci.skeptic:15083 alt.folklore.science:3164
- Newsgroups: sci.physics,sci.skeptic,alt.folklore.science
- Path: sparky!uunet!europa.asd.contel.com!darwin.sura.net!uvaarpa!murdoch!kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU!crb7q
- From: crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass)
- Subject: Re: The dangers in microwaved food...
- Message-ID: <1992Aug26.234714.29099@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU>
- Sender: usenet@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU
- Organization: University of Virginia
- References: <1992Aug25.224720.24397@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> <1992Aug26.022134.29183@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> <1992Aug26.213345.10592@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com>
- Distribution: na
- Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1992 23:47:14 GMT
- Lines: 44
-
- In article <1992Aug26.213345.10592@lmpsbbs.comm.mot.com> bhv@areaplg2.corp.mot.com (Bronis Vidugiris) writes:
- >In article <1992Aug26.022134.29183@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
-
- >)>I don't recall anything like that. I recall now that there was a problem
- >)>with cataracts at *really* high levels, but I believe that was still believed
- >)>to be due to the heating effects.
- >)
- >) I do not know of any such effect either, except for the fact that
- >) arms and legs and eyeballs have marvelous dimensions for developing hot
- >) spots under 2.45 GHz irradiation (especially eyeballs). Babies
- >) heads have this same property, though most adults have heads
- >) that are too large to build up any substantial hot spots except
- >) in their eyes (c.f. Taflove and Brodwin, IEEE Microwave Theory and
- >) Techniques MTT-23:888 (1975)).
- >)
- >) Of course, the input power would have to be substantial in order to have
- >) any significant heat generation.
- >)
- >) Just another reason to keep kids and hammers away from your microwave...
- >
- >There was a case someone brought up in the talk where I heard about the topic
- >(this was brought up by someone in the audience, not the speaker) where a
- >hospital patient developed cataracts after exposure to a malfunctioning
- >diathermy machine which put out too much power. This was not a
- >low-level/long term risk sort of thing at all. Nor was it necessarily
- >repeatable.
- >
-
- You are probably right about heating causing this. I suspect that
- with some of the hot spots that can be developed in eyeballs
- (combined with the scarcity of bloodflow compared to many other
- parts of the body) that heating due to a faulty diathermy machine
- could build up rapidly enough to cause the proteins in the lens
- to denature.
-
- As far as repeating it, let us hope not.
-
- dale bass
-
- --
- C. R. Bass crb7q@virginia.edu
- Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
- University of Virginia
- Charlottesville, Virginia (804) 924-7926
-