Effect of 99 GHz continuous millimeter wave electro-magnetic radiation on E. coli viability and metabolic activity

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate time exposure dependence of continuous millimeter wave (CW) 99 GHz radiation on Escherichia coli bacterial cell viability and metabolic activity.

Materials and methods: Suspensions of E. coli bacterial cells with an optical density of OD_660nm = 0.1 were used for viability tests and OD_660nm = 1.0 for metabolic activity tests. These suspensions were exposed to 99 GHz CW electromagnetic radiation, generated by a Backward Wave Oscillator (BWO) tube base instrument with a horn antenna at the BWO exit, to obtain an almost ideal Gaussian beam. Calculations of the Gaussian beam show that a power of 0.2 mW/cm² was obtained at the bacterial plane.

Results: The experimental results show that 1 hour of exposure to 99 GHz CW electromagnetic radiation had no effect on E. coli viability and colony characterisation. In 19 h of radiation, the number of colonies forming units was half order of magnitude higher than the sham-exposed and the control. However, 19 h of exposure did not affect the E. coli metabolic activity.

Conclusions: Exposure of E. coli to millimeter wave (MW) CW 99 GHz radiation for a short period did not affect the viability of E. coli bacterial cells. However, exposure for 19 h caused a slight proliferation but did not influence the metabolic activities of about 90 biochemical reactions that were examined. Hence, we assume that the slight proliferation (half order of magnitude) after 19 h of exposure dose not have a biological meaning.

Keywords:

• exposure system
• free space propagation
• Gaussian beam
• bacteria cell's metabolic activity
• bacteria cell's viability

Declaration of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest. They alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.