Sense, nonsense, and microwaves

One of the difficulties in detecting spurious claims occurs when the writer (or speaker) mixes fact, and real science, in with spurious bits and stirs the resulting hash so thoroughly that it's hard to tell which is which.  When a claim is made of unadulterated bullshit, our job is easier.  Mixtures of science and pseudoscience, though, are often hard to tease apart.

A loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me a good example of this yesterday, a link to an article on the website NaturalSociety called "Microwave Dangers - Why You Should Not Use A Microwave."  

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Mk2010, Microwave oven (interior), CC BY-SA 3.0]

In this piece, author Mike Barrett describes the terrible things that microwave ovens do to the people who use them and to the food that's cooked in them.  Amongst the claims Barrett makes:

1. Microwave ovens heat food by making water molecules move "at an incredible speed."  This differs from conventional ovens, which gradually transfer heat into the food "by convection."  Further, this energy transfer into the water molecules results in their being "torn apart and vigorously deformed."
2. Microwaves are radiation.  This radiation can "cause physical alterations" even though microwaves are classified as "non-ionizing."  This radiation "accumulates over time and never goes away."
3. Microwave exposure has a greater effect on your brain than on your other body parts, because "microwave frequencies are very similar to the frequencies of your brain," and this causes "resonance."
4. Exposure to microwaves causes all sorts of problems, from cancer to cataracts and everything in between.
5. Raw foods have "life energy" in the form of "biophotons," that came directly from the sun.  These "biophotons" contain "bio-information," which is why eating sun-ripened raw fruits makes you feel happy.  Microwaving food destroys the "biophotons" which makes it lose all of its nutritional value.
6. Microwaving foods causes the conversion of many organic molecules into carcinogens.
7. Microwave ovens were invented by the Nazis.

Okay, let's look at these claims one at a time.

1. First, all heating of food makes the molecules move faster.  That's what an increase in temperature means.  A piece of broccoli heated to 60 C in a microwave and a piece of broccoli heated to 60 C in a steamer have equal average molecular speeds.  Ordinary ovens don't heat most foods by convection; convection heating requires bits of the food itself to move -- so, for example, heating a pot of soup on the stove creates convection, where the bottom part of the soup, in contact with the base of the pot, gets heated first, then rises, carrying its heat energy with it.  Foods in conventional ovens are heated by a combination of radiation from the heating coils, and conduction of that heat energy into the food from the outside in.  Further, heating the water molecules doesn't "tear them apart," because then you'd have hydrogen and oxygen gas, not water.
2. Microwaves are radiation.  So is sunlight.  Sure, microwaves can cause physical alterations, which is why it's inadvisable to climb inside a microwave oven and turn it on.  But not all kinds of radiation accumulate; the microwaves themselves are gone within a millisecond (absorbed and converted into heat) of when the magneto shuts off, otherwise it wouldn't be safe to open the door.  Barrett seems to be making an unfortunately common error, which is to confuse radiation with radioactivity.  Radioactive substances, or at least some of them, do bioaccumulate, which is why strontium-90 showed up in cows' milk following the Chernobyl disaster.  But your microwaved bowl of clam chowder is not radioactive, it's just hot.
3. When oscillations of one body trigger oscillations of another body at the same frequency, this is called resonance.  However, your brain does not oscillate at the frequency as microwaves -- the frequency he quotes for microwaves inside a microwave oven is 2,450 megahertz (2.45 billion times per second), which is actually correct.  Brains, on the other hand, don't oscillate at all, unless you happen to be at a Metallica concert.
4. Agreed, exposure to microwaves isn't good for you.   Thus my suggestion in (2) above not to get inside a microwave oven and turn it on.
5. There is no such thing as a "biophoton."  You do not absorb useful energy in the form of photons in any case, for the very good reason that you are not a plant.  The only "bio-information" we have is our DNA.  Sun-ripened fruit may taste better, as it's ripened more slowly and has a longer time to develop sugars and esters (the compounds that give fruits their characteristic smell and taste), but microwaves don't destroy "life energy."  This bit is complete nonsense.
6. Microwaving food may cause some small-scale alterations of organic molecules into carcinogens, but so does all cooking.  In fact, the prize for the highest introduction of carcinogens into food has to be awarded to grilling -- the blackened bits on a charcoal-grilled t-bone steak contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known carcinogens.  The problem is, they're also very tasty carcinogens, which is why I still like grilled steaks.
7. Microwave ovens weren't invented by the Nazis.  The first microwave oven was built by Percy Spencer, an engineer from Maine, in 1945.  The mention of the Nazis seemed only to be thrown in there to give the argument a nice sauce of evil ("anything the Nazis invented must be bad").  But it's false in any case, so there you are.

So, anyhow, that's my analysis of Barrett's anti-microwave screed.  He's pretty canny, the way he scatters in actual facts and correct science with poorly-understood science, pseudoscience, and outright nonsense; the difficulty is, you have to have a pretty good background in science to tell which is which.  All of which argues for better science education, and better education in critical thinking skills.  But any effort I make in that direction will have to wait, because my coffee's getting cold, and I need to go nuke it for a couple of seconds.

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Tower of power

When I read woo-woo conspiracy nonsense, one of the first things I often do is to shout at the computer, "Learn some damn science, will you?"

Not that it accomplishes anything.  The writers can't hear me, and my computer has a stress gauge on it that measures my irritation levels and uses that data to decide when would be the optimal time to malfunction so as to get the maximum possible freak-out.  So cluing it in that I'm already frustrated is probably a bad idea, a little like acting scared in front of a potentially vicious dog.

This all comes up because of a post over at the dubiously sane website Nutbarfactor.com, called "Why are WEAPONIZED Cell Towers Popping Up All Over the Country?"  This article raised a number of questions, the first of which is to ask whether the website is "Nut Bar Factor" or "Nut Barf Actor."  Because clearly those aren't the same thing.

Be that as it may, we hear right from the get-go about why you should worry if you live near a cell tower:

WHY DO CELL TOWERS REQUIRE MULTIPLE 300,000 WATT ELECTRIC CABLES? 

SHORT ANSWER?  THEY ARE NOT CELL TOWERS!

Apparently, one of the bad effects is that they cause your computer's caps lock to get stuck on.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But it's worse than that, as he goes on to tell us:

(A) communications satellite uses 2,400 watts of power (about the same as used by 2 hair dryers).  A microwave oven uses 1,000 watts (1 kilowatt) of energy.  The satellite gets the energy from solar panels and the microwave gets it from your electric utility (the electrical power grid)...  (T)he cables leading into a typical cell phone tower, which he describes as “A giant microwave oven on a stick,” capable of releasing 3,000,000 watts (3 megawatts) of output power to the tower’s magnetron – or even more megawatts, if there is an amplifier at the top.

So why would they have such a power capacity?  Surely it can't have anything to do with power transmission intensity dropping off as a function of the inverse square of the distance, or the necessity of broadcasting over a long range, right?

Of course not.

These megawatts of extra power are NOT for data transfer – nothing close to that amount of energy is required for data transfer – which is an important point, because this suggests to him that cell phone towers are easily capable of being switched to Weaponized Mode. 

That cell phone towers are wired with the capability to release millions of watts of microwave radiation makes them veritable of “towers of death”, the perfect weapons against an “invasion” – or the mega-slaughter of the domestic population... (I)f whoever we elect turns out to be so crazy, batshit evil, that they could fake a reason to turn on the ‘Last Line of Defense,’ the ‘Anti-Foreign Invasion’, ‘Anti-Zombie Apocalypse Network’ to cook the entire population within the city limits within an hour, in the middle of the night, with robot armies to mop up the people living in the countryside.

Sure they will.  Because what does government exist for, if not to cook us all like reheating yesterday's leftover pork roast?

Anyway.  Let's look at what people who actually understand physics have to say about the danger.  From an article by Elliott Drucker in Wireless Week, we have the following:

As a worst-case scenario in terms of exposure to RF radiation, consider a cell tower located only 30 meters (about 100 feet) away, and transmitting a total of 500W effective radiated power (ERP).  Of course, if you are only 30 meters from the transmitting antennas, you also are likely well below their horizontal beam centers even if severe downtilt is used. But for the sake of our worst-case analysis, let's assume that the full 500W is aimed right at you.  In that case, the RF power density where you are standing would be 4.4 microwatts per square centimeter.  For comparison, the FCC's mandated power density limits for continuous uncontrolled RF exposure by the general public are 600 and 1,000 microwatts per square centimeter for 900 and 1900 MHz signals, respectively.  Even in our highly unlikely worst-case scenario, RF exposure levels would be well under 1 percent of the maximum deemed safe by the FCC.

Put another way, by a physicist friend of mine, "A common number given for the power output of a cellphone tower is 100 watts.  So in terms of its power output, the tower would be as dangerous as a 100 watt light bulb."

What about his claim that there is a 3 megawatt power consumption rate by cell towers?  Besides the fact that he apparently pulls this number out of thin air, there's the problem that the input power of the cell tower isn't only used for broadcasting the cell signal, it's used for other things -- like lighting.  Most of the lights on cell towers are high-wattage incandescents.  According to my physicist pal, "I'd have to do the math to be certain of this, but my guess is that a significant fraction of the input energy of a cell tower is actually going into peripherals like lighting.  The output signal runs at a surprisingly low wattage."

So unfortunately for the conspiracy-minded, the likelihood that the government is planning on microwaving us all to death is completely unfounded.  It's a pity, especially given that one of the uses that the guy at Nut Barf Actor came up with was as an "Anti-Zombie Apocalypse Network."  Which I have to admit to being a good idea.  You have to wonder how well zombies would deal with being microwaved until they were piping hot on the inside.

The possessed microwave

Spurred by my post a couple of weeks ago debunking claims that microwave ovens are unsafe, a loyal reader of Skeptophilia sent me an email saying, "Ha.  A lot you know.  Your microwave has just lulled you into a false sense of security.  Because, you know... demons."

Along with the message, he sent me a link to an article from Empire News called "Paranormal Investigators Confirm Poltergeist Possession of Microwave."  And as soon as I saw the title, I knew this was gonna be good.

[image courtesy of photographer Christian Rasmussen at apoltix.dk, and the Wikimedia Commons]

Turns out that Bill Michaud, of Louisville, Kentucky, has been having trouble with his microwave oven.  "We found [the microwave] in the attic when we moved in a few months back," Michaud said.  "Didn’t have one, so figured, ‘what the hell,’ might as well try it.  I tell you, the thing heats up the food real nice.  Sometimes it beeped or turned itself off in the middle of cooking, though.  Then really weird things started happening.  It zapped at food as if we were putting shards of metal in it.  I couldn’t figure it out."

Michaud's wife, Betty, concurs.  "It turns on by itself.  It turns off by itself, too," she said.  "It’s like it’s messing with me.  No matter how many times I popped the door shut, the minute I leave the room it pops open again.  One night, really late, I walk into the kitchen and I’m about to open the fridge, and the microwave door flies open, lighting the whole kitchen up in a horrible, scary lightning-blue color.  It’s like it wanted to electrocute me."

Well, I know what it's like to own a mechanical device that appears to be not only sentient, but evil.  I feel that way about my lawn mower, which seems to have a sensor that detects how long the grass is, so it knows when to break down.  One time this summer, when the grass had gotten so long that my only other choice would have been to rent a flock of sheep, the Possessed Lawn Mower decided that this would be a fine time to stop working.  So it let me back it out of the garage, and get all the way down the hill into the back yard, and then in rapid succession (1) the blade suddenly stopped turning, (2) the engine stalled, and afterwards would only make obscene farting noises when I turned the key in the ignition, and finally (3) it simply decided to stop responding entirely and became the world's largest paperweight.  Because (4) the wheel release is broken, and the brakes engage whenever the motor isn't running, the Possessed Lawn Mower was left out in the back yard in the rain, with the grass slowly engulfing it, until the mower repair guy had time to come fix it three weeks later.

But I digress.

Bill and Betty Michaud certainly had reason to stop using the microwave, not to mention a good explanation as to why the previous owners had tossed it up in the attic.  But that didn't stop them from continuing to use it, until one day when Bill was heating up some leftovers.  "[I]t went off like the food was done," Michaud said, "and when I looked over, the damn thing was still going and said 6:66."

Well, that was enough for him.  Instead of doing what I would have done, which is throw it out and buy a new microwave, he called in some paranormal investigators.  They got Kevin Young, a professional ghost hunter, who got permission from the Michauds to spend the night in the house.

"The Michauds didn’t want to go without a microwave, or risk upsetting the spirit by taking it out of the house," Young said.  "My wife, who is also on my squad, is highly empathic.  As we warmed up TV dinners in the microwave, she sensed a presence.  As soon as she mentioned it, the microwave started beeping repeatedly.  The door flung open, and my 'Hungry Man' dinner went flying across the room.  We pressed the off button.  We unplugged it.  It beeped several times after we cut off the power.  Of course our digital recording became corrupted, which often happens when there is such strong energy."

Of course.  And you have to admit that the spirit crossed a line when it threw Young's 'Hungry Man' TV dinner across the room.  In the words of the inimitable Bugs Bunny, "Of course you know: this means war."

So Young called in the big guns, namely an "authority on mechanical possession," one Carl Richards.  Richards confirmed the presence of a poltergeist in the microwave, but cautioned the Michauds against simply throwing the oven out and getting a new one.

"It is important to remember, the malevolent presence does not strictly ‘live in’ the microwave," Richards said.  "Getting rid of the machine will not solve the problem.  It has the ability to travel throughout the electrical wiring in the house."

Which is pretty scary.  God forbid a poltergeist should get into the coffee maker or something.

In the end, Young and Richards advised the Michauds to stop paying attention to it.  "It is best not to engage the being," Young told them.  "Try not to be fearful.  Always remain calm.  If you’re facing a poltergeist in your kitchen devices, just ignore its outbursts, and it will not be able to feed off your energies."

Myself, I'd have been more worried about the damn thing malfunctioning and burning down the house.  But that's just me.

The Michauds still use the microwave, which "heats up leftovers like a champ," and they ignore its periodic demonic outbursts the same way you'd "ignore a child's temper tantrum."  So it all ended happily enough, which I suppose is good.

So Young and Richards have wrapped up their work in Louisville, and presumably are looking for other possessed devices to investigate.  I'd like to invite them to come look at my lawn mower.  My lawn is needing to be mowed, in what is likely to be the last mowing of the season, and this would be an inopportune time for it to malfunction.  Meaning that the demon that lives in the engine is going to be primed and ready.  I'd like to have a strategy in place by then.  Be prepared, that's my motto.

Microwave phobia

In order to avoid falling for whatever absurd nonsense happen to be in the offing, you not only need to have some good critical thinking skills, you also need a basic knowledge of the sciences.

This is especially critical given the penchant that pseudoscience hacks have for using scientific-sounding terms in bogus ways.  Given that said hacks are quite good at sounding convincing, and can throw around random vocabulary words with the best of 'em, if you don't understand the basic laws of science, as well as a few solid definitions, you're going to fall for whatever tripe they're offering.

Take, for example, the article from Prevent Disease that I've now seen several times on social media, called "12 Facts About Microwaves That Should Forever Terminate Their Use."

[image courtesy of photographer Christian Rasmussen at apoltix.dk, and the Wikimedia Commons]

This piece, written by one Marco Torres, is so full of false statements and specious science that it's hard to know where to start.  Here's a sample, picked more or less at random:

Microwaves are a source of electromagnetic energy (a form of nonionizing form of radiation) electronically generated. When penetrating the aliments, they trigger an inner rotation of the water molecules inside the food. This rotation triggers a friction between the molecules and the result is a rapid growth in temperature.

Okay, he starts out well.  Microwaves are a form of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation that is electronically generated.  But so is the light from a light bulb.  And I don't know what an "inner rotation of the water molecules" even means -- since microwaves are good at making water molecules (and also fat molecules) spin, maybe this was just a slip.  But the water molecules are not experiencing "friction" -- they're simply moving.  Because that's what an increase in temperature means.  The faster molecules move, the higher the temperature, whether that temperature increase is caused by a microwave, a conventional oven, or just sitting out in the sun.

Then, though, we start hearing about all the bad things this can cause:

Microwaves use super-fast particles to literally radiate the contents of water inside food and bring it to boil. Not only has microwave use been linked to causing infertility in men, but it also denatures many of the essential proteins in the food making them virtually indigestible.

"Super-fast" -- sure, given that all electromagnetic waves travel at the speed of light.  And what's the alternative to "literally radiating" the food?  Figuratively radiating it?

And there is no connection between using microwaves and infertility, as long as you keep your genitalia outside of the microwave oven.  So guys -- if you're microwaving your lunch while naked, don't accidentally shut your junk in the door and then turn the oven on.

Then we have this unintentionally funny statement:

Most animals will only consume food in its natural, unprocessed state, but humans actually go out of their way to render food nutritionally worthless before eating it.

True, I suppose.  I've hardly ever seen a squirrel operating a microwave oven.

Think about all the prepackaged and processed foods we purchase and consume annually. It's no wonder the state of our health is in dire straits.

So here we have a mix of truth, opinion, and blatant falsehood, all in one sentence.  Prepackaged food is wasteful of resources -- consider the practice, common in grocery stores, of individually shrink-wrapping zucchini and cucumbers.  Processed food is another matter -- a lot of canned food (especially things like soups) are sky-high in salt and sugar, and rather low in solid nutritional content.  But as far as "our health (being) in dire straits," it actually isn't.  Our life expectancy and general health is better now than at any time in the Earth's history.  The distant past wasn't some kind of idyll in which our ancestors lived in a healthy, natural paradise; it was closer to the line from Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan.

Solitary, nasty, poor, brutish, and short.

Then we have this:

Microwave ovens work physically, biochemically and physiologically, producing ions and various free radicals, which destroy viruses and bacteria, but not toxins and microtoxins. The experts have concluded that food cooked in microwaves loses between 60% and 90% of its vital energy and, at the same time, the structural disintegration processes accelerates. Also, the nutrient substances are altered, leading to digestive diseases. These microwaves can increase both the number of cancerous cells in blood and the number of stomach and intestinal cancerous cells.

How does non-ionizing radiation produce ions, pray tell?  And it's true that microwaving food won't destroy most toxins, but neither will conventional cooking.  Are you therefore somehow implying that raw toxins are better than cooked ones?  Generally, if your food is toxic, you shouldn't eat it.

And there's no such thing as "vital energy."  Your food is supposed to be dead when you consume it.  My general opinion is that if you're getting your "vital energy" by biting chunks out of live animals, you need psychiatric evaluation, not nutritional counseling.

And there's no connection between microwaves and cancer.  Cf. the Skepticink article I linked above, which explains why that claim is bogus quite nicely.

And so on and so forth.  It's easy to see how someone who isn't well-versed in science might be swayed by this garbage.  Between the science-y sounding language, and the fear talk, you can understand how someone could be alarmed into getting rid of their microwave oven.  The only insurance against this kind of spurious pseudo-journalism is knowing some science, and catching these folks at their game.

So, in short: go ahead and use your microwave.  It's clean, efficient, and has low energy consumption rates.  Used properly, it has no negative health impact.

As long as you don't accidentally microwave your testicles.  I have to admit, that was good advice.

Sense, nonsense, and microwaves

One of the difficulties in detecting spurious claims occurs when the writer (or speaker) mixes fact, and real science, in with spurious bits and stirs the resulting hash so thoroughly that it's hard to tell which is which.  When a claim is made of unadulterated bullshit (such as yesterday's post about ley lines), our job is easier.  Mixtures of science and pseudoscience, though, are often hard to tease apart.

I saw a good example of this yesterday, in an article on the website NaturalSociety called "Microwave Dangers - Why You Should Not Use A Microwave."  In this piece, author Mike Barrett describes the terrible things that microwave ovens do to the people who use them and to the food that's cooked in them.  Amongst the claims Barrett makes:

1. Microwave ovens heat food by making water molecules move "at an incredible speed."  This differs from conventional ovens, which gradually transfer heat into the food "by convection."  Further, this energy transfer into the water molecules results in their being "torn apart and vigorously deformed."
2. Microwaves are radiation.  This radiation can "cause physical alterations" even though microwaves are classified as "non-ionizing."  This radiation "accumulates over time and never goes away."
3. Microwave exposure has a greater effect on your brain than on your other body parts, because "microwave frequencies are very similar to the frequencies of your brain," and this causes "resonance."
4. Exposure to microwaves causes all sorts of problems, from cancer to cataracts and everything in between.
5. Raw foods have "life energy" in the form of "biophotons," that came directly from the sun.  These "biophotons" contain "bio-information," which is why eating sun-ripened raw fruits makes you feel happy.  Microwaving food destroys the "biophotons" which makes it lose all of its nutritional value.
6. Microwaving foods causes the conversion of many organic molecules into carcinogens.
7. Microwave ovens were invented by the Nazis.

Okay, let's look at these claims one at a time.

1. First, all heating of food makes the molecules move faster.  That's what an increase in temperature means.  A piece of broccoli heated to 60 C in a microwave and a piece of broccoli heated to 60 C in a steamer have equal average molecular speeds.  Ordinary ovens don't heat most foods by convection; convection heating requires bits of the food itself to move -- so, for example, heating a pot of soup on the stove creates convection, where the bottom part of the soup, in contact with the base of the pot, gets heated first, then rises, carrying its heat energy with it.  Foods in conventional ovens are heated by a combination of radiation from the heating coils, and conduction of that heat energy into the food from the outside in.  Further, heating the water molecules doesn't "tear them apart," because then you'd have hydrogen and oxygen gas, not water.
2. Microwaves are radiation.  So is sunlight.  Sure, microwaves can cause physical alterations, which is why it's inadvisable to climb inside a microwave oven and turn it on.  But not all kinds of radiation accumulate; the microwaves themselves are gone within a millisecond (absorbed and converted into heat) of when the magneto shuts off, otherwise it wouldn't be safe to open the door.  Barrett seems to be making an unfortunately common error, which is to confuse radiation with radioactivity.  Radioactive substances, or at least some of them, do bioaccumulate, which is why strontium-90 showed up in cows' milk following the Chernobyl disaster.  But your microwaved bowl of clam chowder is not radioactive, it's just hot.
3. When oscillations of one body trigger oscillations of another body at the same frequency, this is called resonance.  However, your brain does not oscillate at the frequency as microwaves -- the frequency he quotes for microwaves inside a microwave oven is 2,450 megahertz (2.45 billion times per second), which is actually correct.  Brains, on the other hand, don't oscillate at all, unless you happen to be at a Metallica concert.
4. Agreed, exposure to microwaves isn't good for you.  Thus my suggestion in (2) above not to get inside a microwave oven and turn it on.
5. There is no such thing as a "biophoton."  You do not absorb useful energy in the form of photons in any case, for the very good reason that you are not a plant.  The only "bio-information" we have is our DNA.  Sun-ripened fruit may taste better, as it's ripened more slowly and has a longer time to develop sugars and esters (the compounds that give fruits their characteristic smell and taste), but microwaves don't destroy "life energy."  This bit is complete nonsense.
6. Microwaving food may cause some small-scale alterations of organic molecules into carcinogens, but so does all cooking.  In fact, the prize for the highest introduction of carcinogens into food has to be awarded to grilling -- the blackened bits on a charcoal-grilled t-bone steak contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are known carcinogens.  The problem is, they're also very tasty carcinogens, which is why I still like grilled steaks.
7. Microwave ovens weren't invented by the Nazis.  The first microwave oven was built by Percy Spencer, an engineer from Maine, in 1945.  The mention of the Nazis seemed only to be thrown in there to give the argument a nice sauce of evil ("anything the Nazis invented must be bad").  But it's false in any case, so there you are.

So, anyhow, that's my analysis of Barrett's anti-microwave screed.  He's pretty canny, the way he scatters in actual facts and correct science with poorly-understood science, pseudoscience, and outright nonsense; the difficulty is, you have to have a pretty good background in science to tell which is which.  All of which argues for better science education, and better education in critical thinking skills.  But any effort I make in that direction will have to wait, because my coffee's getting cold, and I need to go nuke it for a couple of seconds.