Love for Life

Microwaving Water!

A 26-year old man decided to have a cup of coffee. He took a cup of water and put it in the microwave to heat it up (something that he had done numerous times before). I am not sure how long he set the timer for, but he wanted to bring the water to a boil. When the timer shut the oven off, he removed the cup from the oven. As he looked into the cup, he noted that the! water was not boiling, but suddenly the water in the cup 'blew up' into his face. The cup remained intact until he threw it out of his hand, but all the water had flown out into his face due to the bui ld up of energy. His whole face is blistered and he has 1st and 2nd degree burns to his face which may leave scarring.

He also may have lost partial sight in his left eye. While at the hospital, the doctor who was attending to him stated that this is a fairly common occurrence and water (alone) should never be heated in amicrowave oven. If water is heated in this manner, something should be placed in the cup to diffuse the energy such as a wooden stir stick, tea bag, etc.., (nothing metal).

General Electric's Response:

Thanks for contacting us, I will be happy to assist you. The e-mail that you received is correct. Microwaved water and other liquids do not always bubble when they reach the boiling point. They can actually get superheated and not bubble at all. The superheated liquid will bubble up out of the cup when it is moved or when something like a spoon or tea bag is put into it.

To prevent this from happening and causing injury, do not heat any liquid for more than two minutes per cup. After heating, let the cup stand in the microwave for thirty seconds! before moving it or adding anything into it.

Here is what our local science teacher had to say on the matter: 'Thanks for the microwave warning. I have seen this happen before. It is caused by a phenomenon known as super heating. It can occur anytime water is heated and will particularly occur if the vessel that the water is heated in is new, or when heating a small amount o f water (less than half a cup).

What happens is that the water heats faster than the vapor bubbles can form. If the cup is very new then it is unlikely to have small surface scratches inside it that provide a place for the bubbles to form. As the bubbles cannot form and release some of the heat has built up, the liquid does not boil, and the liquid continues to heat up well past its boiling point.

What then usually happens is that the liquid is bumped or jarred, which is just enough of a shock to cause the bubbles to rapidly form and expel the hot liquid. The rapid formation of bubbles is also why acarbonated beverage spews when opened after having been shaken.'

If you pass this on you could very well save someone from a lot of pain and suffering.

Dangers of Microwaved Water
by author Hannah Mickelson

About five days ago, my 26-year old son decided to have a cup of instant coffee. He took a cup of water and put it in the microwave to heat (something that he had done numerous times before).

I am not sure how long he set the timer for, but he told me he wanted to bring the water to a boil. When the timer shut the oven off, he removed the cup. As he looked into the cup he noted that the water was not boiling, but instantly the water “blew up” into his face. The cup remained intact until he threw it out of his hand, but the water flew out due to the build-up of energy. His whole face is now blistered with first and second degree burns to his face which may leave scarring. He also may have lost partial sight in his left eye.

While at the hospital, the doctor who was attending him stated that this is a fairly common occurrence and water (alone) should never be heated in a microwave oven. If water is heated in this manner, something (such as a wooden stir stick or tea bag) should be placed in the cup to diffuse the energy. It’s a much safer choice to boil the water in a teakettle.

On further research into the story we determined that scientists agree that this can happen, though they offer a somewhat complicated explanation. Richard Barton writes in New Scientist magazine:

“A portion of the water in the cup is becoming superheated–the liquid temperature is actually slightly above the boiling point, where it would normally form a gas. In this case, the boiling is hindered by a lack of nucleation sites needed to form the bubbles.

“When water is heated on a conventional stove, the porous surface of the kettle and the convection caused by the hotter liquid rising from the bottom enable the water to convert to steam. It boils. But a stationary cup of water in a microwave oven can heat past the boiling point without actually boiling. If that happens, placing an object (like a teabag) in the water or jarring the cup could cause the sudden–and explosive–conversion of part of the water to steam.

“I imagine,” adds Barton, “that by keeping the cup still and microwaving for a long time, one could blow the entire contents of the cup into the interior of the microwave as soon as you introduced any nucleation sites. It is this sometimes explosive rate of steam production that means you should take great care when using a microwave oven.”

The US Food and Drug Administration advises consumers to avoid superheated water. When heating water in the microwave you should:

Follow precautions and recommendations of the microwave regarding heating times.

* Do not use excessive amounts of time when heating water in microwaves.
* Determine the best time setting to heat the water, just to the desired temperature and use that time setting regularly.

Source: alive #219, January 2001: http://www.alive.com/3833a2a2.php?subject_bread_cramb=449

Cooked
by author William Thomas

How nutritious is microwaved food? In a small town just outside Basel, two Swiss scientists sought some answers to a question as simple as it was contentious. But neither man was prepared for results that would soon prove hotter than the ovens themselves.

The year was 1992. Tests conducted at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the University Institute for Biochemistry mimicked microwaved food in homes and restaurants in Canada and around the world. Hans Hertel and Bernard Blanc suspected that electromagnetic energy, intense enough to make bacteria glow in their food samples, could alter food chemistry–and the bloodstream of anyone eating microwaved food. But they were stunned to find cholesterol counts up sharply in people eating microwaved vegetables.

Comparing the blood chemistry of people after eating food cooked in conventional and microwave ovens, a dismayed Hertel explained that "blood cholesterol levels are less influenced by cholesterol content of the food than by stress factors." Stressing out vegetables inside a microwave oven, the scientist concluded, ensures that such stresses "can apparently exist in foods which contain virtually no cholesterol."

After taking blood samples from volunteers over a two-month period, Hertel and Blanc found that the nutritional components of all milk and veggies were degraded after being heated in a microwave oven.

So was the blood chemistry of consumers. These abrupt measurable changes included a decrease in high-density lipoprotein (good cholesterol) and a sharp rise in low-density lipoprotein (bad cholesterol) levels following the consumption of microwaved food.

The two researchers also discovered marked declines in the number of red blood cells that carry oxygen to the tissues and collect carbon dioxide, as well as in white blood cells that fight infections. Such significant symptoms of bodily stress "are often signs of pathogenic effects on the living system, such as poisoning and cell damage," the health investigators noted.

For corroboration, Hertel pointed to "extensive scientific literature concerning the hazardous effects of direct microwave radiation on living systems." Noting how gene-splicing geneticists use microwaves to weaken cell membranes, the health detective described how the life-giving electrical charge of cells is neutralized by microwaves. This suppresses natural repair mechanisms, he added, making cells "easy prey for viruses, fungi and other micro-organisms."

Microwave Mania

Bad bugs are everywhere. So are these drastic devices. From restaurants and home kitchens to hospitals and hotel rooms, microwave ovens have infiltrated our lives until most contestants, racing to keep up with runaway technologies, cannot imagine having ever lived without them.

But electricity and magnetism infuse and inform our electro-chemical cells with the pulsating energies of life. Is it wise to repeatedly zap such subtly pervasive forces?

Invisible emissions from microwave ovens often radiate at head level. Aging door seals leak microwaves, while electromagnetic fields (EMF) bypass built-in shielding to irradiate rooms. Before unplugging it forever, EMF radiation specialist Chris Anderson measured emissions from the microwave oven in his Salt Spring Island kitchen streaming through walls in a bedroom nine metres (10 yards) away.

Unlike conventional convection cooking, which heats food from the outside in, microwave ovens heat drinks and dinner from the inside out. High-frequency microwaves starting at around 500 MHz and extending up in the infrared frequencies permeate food, forcing water molecules to heat up by bending them rapidly back and forth.

The result is a fierce electrical whiplash. The Swiss scientists discovered that electrically-charged atoms in the cells bombarded by microwave ovens are forced to reverse their life-giving electrical polarity or "charge" up to 100 billion times a second.

"There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to withstand such a violent, destructive power for any extended period of time," Hertel says. This will happen even given the microwave oven’s low power range of milliwatts.

"Structures of molecules are torn apart, molecules are forcefully deformed and thus become impaired in quality."

In fact, this frenetic friction rips food apart at the molecular level, rearranging its chemical composition-and the blood chemistry of anyone munching microwaved meals.

The higher the frequency of electromagnetic fields, the more damage results. Microwaves are near the top of the frequency spectrum. Yet many hospitals continue to collect, freeze and reheat mothers’ milk in microwave ovens!

Malevolent Microbes

Hospital administrators may have missed the April, 1992 issue of Pediatrics Journal, which reported a Stanford study showing that microwaved breast milk loses important vitamins and antibodies needed by infants to fend off malevolent microbes.

The Stanford sleuths further found that microwaving milk increases milk’s acidity, damaging proteins, enlarging fat cells and wiping out the folic acid found to significantly lower the rate of spina-bifida birth defects. Milk heated in a microwave oven and then doused with E. coli bacteria also grew 18 times more bacteria than milk heated in a pan and cultured with E. coli.

Salmonella bacteria may also survive in a microwave’s uneven "cold spots" that do not fully cook food placed inside. Even worse, instead of exuding water, like food cooked in convection ovens, microwaved food cells excrete cancer-enhancing carbon dioxide, hydrogen peroxide and carbon monoxide.

Hertel blew his warning whistle when he saw that alterations in blood chemistry caused by consuming microwaved food mirrored the beginning stages of some cancers. Publishing his findings in the Journal Franz Weber, Hertel bluntly warned that food cooked in microwave ovens causes cancer-type effects in the blood.

Microwave makers boiled over. Reacting like any corporate interest kicked in its profits, the Swiss Association of Manufacturers and Suppliers of Household Appliances quickly brought a civil action against the researchers, demanding that Hertel and Blanc be legally silenced. In a ruling as ironic as it was drastic, a Swiss court prohibited Hertel from publicly "declaring that food prepared in microwave ovens shall be dangerous to health and lead to changes in the blood of consumers, giving reference to pathologic troubles as also indicative for the beginning of a cancerous process."

Faced with a ferocious attack by this powerful trade lobby, Blanc recanted. But the unrepentant Hertel stuck by their findings.

Hertel says his seminars in Germany were "well-received." So was his appeal against corporate censorship. In August, 1998, the earlier ruling was reversed when the European Court of Human Rights at Strasbourg ruled that the Swiss "gag order" forbidding the Bernese scientist from declaring that microwave ovens pose human health risks contravened Hertel’s right to freedom of expression. The Euro court also ordered Switzerland to pay 40,000 Swiss francs toward Hertel’s legal costs.

Nexus magazine hailed the decisions as "an end to judicial censorship of persons drawing attention to the health hazards of certain products." But in a harried culture addicted to convenience, such unpalatable findings may be hard to swallow.

William Thomas is an investigative journalist living on Gabriola Island, BC.

Source: alive #211, May 2000: http://www.alive.com/153a1a2.php?text_page=1