Luella May
Why They Don't Cause Cancer
Like the broiler on conventional stoves, microwave ovens use a type of energy called electromagnetic (EM) radiation to warm your coffee and heat your pizza. Broilers use a form of EM radiation called infrared radiation; microwaves use microwave radiation (hence the name).
While high-energy forms of EM radiation, such as x-rays, can cause cancer, infrared and microwave radiation can't, because they simply don't pack enough power to damage your DNA, explains Gary Zeman, ScD, a certified health physicist in Berkeley, CA, and spokesman for the Health Physics Society. (All electrical devices, including microwaves, do generate slight electromagnetic fields, he notes.
Despite concerns, the National Research Council, after much research, found no link between such fields and cancer.) Nor do microwaves make food radioactive, change its protein structure, or contaminate it in any way, Zeman says. Once microwave radiation is absorbed by your leftover meat loaf, it is transformed into heat.
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