Cecil’s latest mailbag certainly put my mind at rest, i’ve always been a little paranoid of Microwaves.
The question remains though, what about when you open the oven door? Aren’t you exposed to the remaining (unabsorbed) microwaves as they bounce out?
This belongs in the Comments on Staff Reports forum, so will be moved soon. The article is What keeps microwave radiation from leaking out the oven door?
Microwaves travel at the speed of light. In the tens of milliseconds that it would take you to open the door, any microwaves that were generated would have had time to bounce around inside the ten million times or so, and there won’t be anything left of them.
The seal about the perimeter of the door doesn’t even have a chance to separate before the door interlock switch has interrupted the current flow to the ‘business’ portion of the microwave. And thus, as mention by CurtC, and stray photons bouncing around inside the oven generated by its klystron would have long been kaput.