I believe the “pacemaker danger” signs people put up around microwave ovens are silly and baseless. Surely they spring from some lawyer worried about a suit. Please tell us the real deal. –Nukem All, Houston
90s. Kids these days.
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As you rightly suspect, current medical opinion is that concerns about microwave ovens frying your pacemaker are, if not silly and baseless, certainly exaggerated given the precautions currently taken in manufacturing these devices. “In the early days of microwave ovens and cardiac pacemakers, there was a real possibility that a leaky oven with a significant electromagnetic field being emitted could interfere with operation of a pacemaker with an unshielded lead,” reads one typical bit of advice (Occupational Medicine Forum, Journal of Occupa-tional Medicine, 1992). “Both problems have since been corrected.” The U.S. standard for microwave ovens limits energy leakage to five milliwatts per square centimeter at a distance of five centimeters, and cardiac pacemakers now have shielded leads.
In 1983 an engineer working at a 275,000-volt electrical substation in the UK felt a thumping sensation in his chest when he was near high-voltage conductors. Experiments established that the electromagnetic field generated by the high voltage was interfering with the man’s pacemaker. A 275,000-volt electrical substation presumably generates a stronger electrical field than a microwave oven, and UK power operates at 50 cycles per second, compared to 2.45 billion cycles per second for ovens. But let’s not get technical. The lesson is clear: electricity + pacemakers = bad. The proposed solution, incidentally, was to outfit the guy with a geeky whole-body electricity-conducting protective suit that made him look like Nanook of the North. Faced with wearing one of these things on a hot day, or merely being seen in one, I’d be inclined to investigate a different line of work.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): illustration/Slug Signorino.
