For National Microwave Day, there are three possibilities for why this day is on the calendar: ovens, cellphones, or studies. Why the confusion? All the rest of the event sites say "Microwave Oven Day," right? That's one of the reasons we started LEEP. There is a lot of contradictory information, and we needed to know precisely where events came from. This is an example. Originally this day included the qualifier "Auditory" before "Microwave Day," and we made a notation to follow up on it. MICROWAVE OVENS If it's the oven, the microwave oven originated after WWII but was not available for consumer use until 1967. By the 1990s, 95% of homes in the US would own one. However, December 6 is not the anniversary of any of the patents filed on microwave ovens, nor the birth or death date of the various scientists and engineers attributed to the appliance. If Microwave Oven is the true meaning of this day, then it is simply an unofficial event with no sponsor. However, there is an anniversary tied to microwaves involving auditory sciences. CELLPHONES Tying it to cellphones is the most logical reason for Microwave Day as it relates to a scare that everyone in adulthood during the early 2000s will remember. On December 6, 2006, Danish scientists published a report (given to the press on the 5th) showing that the electromagnetic field (EMF) or microwaves emanating from cellular phones and towers do not cause brain cancer or genetic anomalies. The report was big news at the time. Several conspiracies abound, with many people convinced that holding their phones to their ears for an extended time would result in brain cancer. EMFs were blamed for everything from insomnia to Downs Syndrome. STUDIES You could go for a third option, auditory microwaves, which could be used for crowd control and to prevent wildlife from entering areas harmful to them. The science used is known as the Frey Effect. Now there is a correlation between two and three. Allen H Frey wrote an update to the Danish study noted in option two in 2011. He writes: "(1) Most of the patients (86%) in one study used car telephones or bag telephones, not handheld telephones; the antennae used with car and bag telephones are well away from the head, so there is little, if any, exposure of the head to the energy. (2) Most of the patients (82%) in another of the studies had no or negligible use of a handheld telephone. (3) Shortly after these papers were published, another epidemiology study was published in another prominent medical journal. The authors lumped together car, bag, and handheld telephones as though using all these types of telephones gave the same head exposure as handheld telephones. (4). And the currently reported update of that study has the same faults." Read Frey's entire update at: http://www.bmj.com/rapid-response/2011/11/08/safety-cell-phone-radiation. Frey's bottom line? These epidemiology studies have served the public poorly. Learn more about Frey and the Cell Phone Task Force: http://www.cellphonetaskforce.org/?page_id=594