Microwave Death

The first official recognition in the United States of a causal link between human fatality and exposure to microwave radiation came recently from events that transpired in that most-American of all places, the Empire State building.

Samuel Yannon was a radio technician who worked for 15 years on radio transmitters located atop King Kong's famous perch. After the first 11 years, Yannon complained of sight and hearing problems and was worried that the cause might be the radiowave environment in which he was working. According to a recent article in the London Sunday Times, he later developed cataracts, lost more than half his original weight, became prematurely senile and then died. The courts agreed that the microwave environment was the cause of Yannon's problems and awarded his widow a modest cash and pension settlement.

The United States has no regulations to limit the radiowave energy in a worker's environment, but the Soviet Union requires that the energy not exceed ten microwatts per square centimeter where people regularly work. Samuel Yannon's work environment approximated 1,500 microwatts.

Even short exposure to extremely high levels of microwave radiation may be damaging. European researchers claim that an animal's mental ability is impaired by a half-hour's exposure to energy levels near 10,000 microwatts. This is the level typically found within a few inches of a transmitting walkie-talkie and within a few feet of a mobile radio such as carried in taxicabs.

The average microwave oven shows leakage of 120 microwatts in measurements made a few inches outside the door. Research on cats in California has shown significant changes in chemicals that play a role in brain function when the cats receive prolonged exposure to microwave levels as low as 100 microwatts.

All this warns each of us to be careful. The general radiowave pollution level in Alaska and northwestern Canada is low, but many of us probably do get exposed occasionally to microwave energy of a level considered illegal in the Soviet Union, at least if the exposure is for a prolonged period.