Microwaves called a threat to the climate

A new assessment of British scientists has shown that only in the European Union microwave ovens lead to the release into the atmosphere of the amount of carbon dioxide produced by 7 million cars.

Alejandro Gallego-Schmid and his colleagues from Manchester University conducted the first comprehensive study of the influence that the use of microwave ovens on the climate of the planet has on the whole cycle of production and operation.

Only in the EU countries, microwave ovens produce 7.7 million tons of carbon dioxide per year - this amount produces 6.8 million cars per year - and consumes about 9.4 TWh of energy.

Exhaustion of resources, toxicity of waste and some other factors are associated with the materials used in these devices, energy-intensive in production and disposal. But the global warming factor is mainly determined by the energy consumed and the emissions generated by the generating plants.

One of the main means of dealing with the problem may be the extension of the service life. Over the past decades, the lifetime of household appliances fell at times - for microwave ovens it was 10-15 years in the 1990s and 6-8 years today.