Maszman Speaks!

Ter­a­hertz waves occupy the elec­tro­mag­netic spec­trum between microwaves and infrared light. They can “see” through non-conducting mate­ri­als such as clothes , paper, wood and brick, allow­ing cam­eras to look inside things like envelopes, walls and even cloth­ing. There’s hope that they might be used to find can­cer­ous tumors near the skin’s sur­face. Scan­ners using them are appear­ing the UK for air­port secu­rity, claim­ing to be effec­tive but less intru­sive than other meth­ods. But there are still seri­ous ques­tions about their safety.

Now researchers at Los Alamos have an idea what effect ter­a­hertz waves have: they cause res­o­nant effects that allow THz waves to unzip double-stranded DNA, cre­at­ing bub­bles in the dou­ble strand that could sig­nif­i­cantly inter­fere with processes such as gene expres­sion and DNA repli­ca­tion. Yes, you should be wor­ried. Although THz energy occurs nat­u­rally in the envi­ron­ment, no one knows what will hap­pen when our bod­ies are bom­barded with them in scan­ners and the like. At present there are no expo­sure limit rec­om­men­da­tions as there are with other kinds of elec­tro­mag­netic radi­a­tion. There needs to be, and soon, espe­cially if their use becomes more widespread.

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