PHYSICAL ASPECTS OF PULSED MICROWAVE ABSORPTION IN TISSUE

Abstract

Existence of non-thermal adverse health effects caused by exposure of humans to microwave radiation still remains an open question. It seems now to be commonly accepted, that in case of exposure to continuous microwave radiation, heating of the tissue is the only harmful effect. Situation with exposure to microwave pulses (or more generally, to modulated microwaves) is less clear. Recently, Budi et. al. (2003) published results of a very profound computer simulation of dynamics of molecule of insulin, in which the possibility of its irreversible changes (unfolding) induced by pulsed microwave radiation is admitted. The aim of following calculations is to consider conditions, under which an extremely short microwave pulse could induce irreversible change in an protein molecule and hence could cause loss of its biological function, without rising the temperature of the molecular environment to a level exceeding the acknowledged international health standards. Estimations are supplemented with a realistic computation of microwave radiation absorption effects.