| There are a couple of known mechanisms by which non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation can be dangerous to biological systems. One is by heating of tissue caused by absorption of EM radiation. This one can probably be safely ignored in almost all normal situations. Another is by inducing currents and fields in parts of the organism which could disrupt normal operation. For example, DNA is conductive, and its shape makes it act like a fractal antenna which is good at allowing a wide range of EM radiation to induce currents in it [1]. Damage and errors in the DNA can change the conductivity, and there are some researchers who think that the cell may use this as part of the mechanism that detects and deals with such damage. Induced currents from an external EM wave could cause such a mechanism to miss some damage, and so fail to detect and kill a cell that normally would have been eliminated. Here's an article that talks briefly about some of this [2]. As far as I know it is still just speculation that the cell uses changes in conduction to detect damage. It's a plausible mechanism, but that doesn't mean it is the only possible mechanism or the one nature actually uses. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21457072 [2] https://www.caltech.edu/news/caltech-chemist-jacqueline-bart... |