Looking for Safety Info

Originally Posted by ozarksewaste

Most of the radiation in a microwave is from the microwaves when in operation, but that is a radio wave based radiation..different than alpha, beta, gamma. There is a tiny bit of a radioactive element in the magnetron...starts with a T I believe...it is an alpha emitter, so your skin would block it. Worse than that is the pink stuff...bad for you if broken.

Its Thorium, its very slightly radioactive and it helps the effiency of the Magnetron to 'throw' out its microwaves.
Old gas lamp mantles contained it as well and it helped the light output.
Same with Thorated Tungsten TIG welding electrodes.

Capacitors everywhere will store electricity for a lot longer than you think they will.
Microwave capacitors have a 'bleed resistor' across their terminals (little black box connected by wires to each terminal) so they will slowly use up any power stored in the capacitor. Which does not mean there's no chance of electric shock, just a lesser chance.



Audio amplifiers have several bigger capacitors that will give you a good shock. And I have been 'bitten' by them before.

I also got 'bitten' by the electric charge that builds up in a CRT TV screen when I ' cut the red wire' attached to the rubber suctioncup looking thing that's attached to the tube, behind the screen, on its 'funnel'.

While the shocks not as bad as 240 V AC, it will make you jump, and that jump is where the danger is, like if you jerked your arm away, but across some broken glass or sharp metal, or loose your balance & trip over etc etc.