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

Materials and methods: Suspensions of E. coli bacterial cells with an optical density of OD660nm = 0.1 were used for viability tests and OD660nm = 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/cm