"A lot of people hold on to the notion," says author Paul Brodeur, "that what you can't see can't hurt you. If I've learned anything in my last 10 years of work, it's that what you can't see can kill you." Brodeur's enemies list of environmental hazards to human life includes detergent enzymes, cancer-causing asbestos fibers and ozone-depleting fluorocarbons in spray cans. But none of these, he claims, is so chillingly insidious and pervasive as the subject of his latest investigative work, The Zapping of America—namely, microwave radiation. Americans, says Brodeur, are routinely "zapped" by missile-tracking radars, TV transmitters, microwave ovens and even CB radios, exposing them to potentially injurious or even lethal doses of radiation. Moreover, he claims, the full danger of microwaves has been self-servingly denied—or covered up—by the so-called "military-industrial complex. "A Boston-area native and graduate of Andover and Harvard, Brodeur worked in Army Counterintelligence in Germany during the mid-'50s before joining The New Yorker as a staff writer. A resident of Manhattan, Brodeur, 46, recently discussed microwave radiation with PEOPLE'S Jim Jerome at Brodeur's Cape Cod vacation home.
What does zapping feel like?
Humans cannot feel it, unless they are exposed to levels far in excess of the 10-milliwatt standard. It is then experienced as heat. At lower levels most people do not have the vaguest notion of how much or how little radiation they are exposed to.
Why the cry of cover-up?
For 25 years the military-electronics industry complex has suppressed, ignored or failed to pursue evidence that people were being injured by microwave radiation. The reason is that our weapons systems depend upon the use of microwave radiation. In 1967-68 the State Department went so far as to test women returning from the Moscow embassy for genetic damage—and lied to them as to the nature and the reason for these tests. Today the Army, Navy and Air Force deny there is any such thing as microwave cataracts, even as the Veterans Administration and Department of Labor are awarding compensation for them.
Is the general public aware of the problem?
There is a growing awareness. Now when housewives see the word microwave, maybe they'll think beyond ovens and recipes. There is also bound to be an avalanche of litigation, and the military has tried to buy research that will refute claims of microwave injuries. They want to keep these cases out of the courts.
One Air Force officer told me Paul Brodeur should leave this complicated matter to "the experts."
That's as good a description of how a cover-up is engineered as any I've ever heard.
Microwaves: A paradoxical approach - Eugene Register-Guard - April 1978
Ironically, one of the early assessments of the extent of [microwave radiation] exposure comes from the Raytheon Company, whose wholly owned subsidiary, Amana Refridgeration, is the largest manufacturer of microwave ovens in the world. In 1973, the Raytheon research division became upset by Consumers Union's blanket "Not Recommended" edict on microwave ovens. It asked one of its microwave experts, John Osepchuck, to look into the situation and, if possilbe, come up with a way of countering the adverse publicity.
Osepchuck produce a study of microwave broadcast hazards and found that, according to the President's Office of Telecommunications Policy, the thousand-odd television stations int eh United States "are located in the centers of population and therefore are of prime concern as sources of biological hazard due to 'electromagnetic pollution.'" He compared the total radiated power and energy of these television transmitters with the total that would be put out by a million microwave ovens operating for half an hour a day and determined that "the television broadcast industry irradiates the country and its population by a factor of more than 40,000 greater than the radiation due to microwave ovens."
Osepchuck's study was never formally published or distributed by Raytheon. There is, nevertheless, much anxiety in government circles over the amount of microwave radiation in urban areas, as determined by the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Radiation Programs has been hard at work since October 1975, measuring the intensity of the radiation being emitted by television and radio transmitters in major cities across the United States.
October 29, 2011 - Randolph, Vermont
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