I worked for a while at the US Public Health Service Northeastern Radiological Lab outside of Boston in late 1969. One of their tasks was to evaluate the safety of the then-novel microwave ovens, which were (at the time) too expensive for most households, but were quickly catching on in restaurants. We performed a survey of Boston-area restaurants, nightclubs and strip bars (!!) to check on the radiation leaking from the microwave ovens in use. I don't recall the percentage, but a small percentage of these ovens leaked enough radiation around the door seals to have to be shut down, as they could have caused eye cateracts in the kitchen workers near the oven. Much of the leakage was due to food buildup on the edges of the door, so poor door design was indicated. I think that most of these design defects were repaired in the 2nd or 3rd generation ovens, and I haven't heard of any further problems. However, in the early 1970's, there was a non-zero risk from microwaves escaping, so your colleague wasn't completely off base, at least in that time frame. Now the real question is how to hook up your microwave oven to your wifi, so you can communicate with the Space Shuttle. ;-) (High gain antennas for wifi's are already used by ham radio operators to communicate over 10's of miles, line of sight.) At 01:26 PM 1/28/2014, Tom Knight wrote:
There has to be a hole for radiation from the magnetron. The perforated holes on the front glass are much smaller than a wavelength, and that wall looks essentially solid. That would be true for other holes (although the seams along the door, being long in one dimension, can leak radiation). I had a colleague at MIT that made lots of money selling “radiation detectors” for microwaves to gullible people who thought that this radiation might hurt them.