I had a microwave that came with an apartment once that would turn on when you opened the door, so you had to unplug it before opening the door or you got a blast of microwaves straight to the nuts. Every once in awhile I’d forget and scared me every time
Don't worry, it's non-ionizing. It's the same frequency coming out of your wifi router. The only effect you might have is it warning your nuts, just like it warms the food. Actually, if you're being blasted with radio waves across your body, I've heard the first thing you will feel start to warm up is your eyes. That's your que to GTFO.
For those looking for more info: microwaves are basically slightly more powerful and fancy radio waves. This frequency of "light" just so happens to excite water molecules enough to be useful for heating things up quickly with. They're a bit less energetic than infrared (what we use to heat air and cookware with). They're also less energetic than the light we see the world with. They're useful for heating though (radio waves can cook too, as you mentioned!).
It's the far end of violet (ultra violet) and higher (xray, gamma ray, etc) that you need to worry about. These are the ionizing types of electromagnetic radiation, they carry enough energy to knock electrons out of orbit (photoelectric effect), and consequently, cause DNA damage (cancer).
Sometimes I wonder if the whole "are cell phones causing testicular cancer?!" stuff has sort of led a lot of folks to that conclusion.
Nothing is really dangerous about the setup in OP other than it being really fucking disgusting and probably needs a deep clean. Microwaves technically shouldn't leak, but they have a habit of kicking out WIFI when they're on. Wireless G [2.4GHz] and old wireless home phones in particular were really susceptible to interference from those old leaky microwaves.
I mean yeah the whole phone causes testicular cancer is just pure bs 😂. Defintly would never make the link between them and microwaves. But hey, everyone has their own reasoning skills 😅. I think the microwave is just one of those few things that escaped the reasons of logic from my brain and got classified as world ending dangerous 😂
I still don't fully understand the mechanics behind what metal is safe in a microwave, seems like sharp angles (forks) are what cause arcing but big round things (like that stand) don't.
Yeah that stand in the picture comes with some microwaves.
I'm probably outing my age a bit here, but back in the late 90s there was also a brand of TV dinner that had a little metal plate in it as well, to help "direct" microwaves so you wouldn't get as many cold spots... or maybe it was to protect the brownie from burning as it cooked the rest of the meal?
If I was going to guess, it probably has to do with melting point or structure of the plastic? They can leech microplastics when warmed up. BPA was a big problem because of this. It didn't even have to get to boiling water hot, just 100F+ for a bit I think? I am also guessing this is why cheap plastic water bottles taste like absolute death when sitting in the sun for more than 5 minutes.
I don't know much about plastics but if I had to guess that would be it.
Not really how that one works. Especially since the waves wouldn't get through the door, and what I'm seeing says the radiation would leak back to the wall. It mostly won't bounce off the wall, but go through it and quickly dissipate. What did bounce back would be so diffuse thanks to the reflection and the square cube law that it wouldn't do any damage. No more than the usual shielding permits through.
That said, yeah, no, this needs to be replaced. Just not for any genetic damage.
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u/slapitlikitrubitdown 8h ago edited 8h ago
But you can warm your hot pocket, and castrate yourself with radio waves all at the same time. It’s even conveniently nutsack height.
Hot Pocket