> http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991470
>
> That limit covers exposure to steady fields for several minutes to an
> hour - but heating a layer of skin 0.3 mm thick to 50 °C in just one
> second requires much higher power and may pose risks to the cornea,
> which is more sensitive than skin. A study published last year in the
> journal Health Physics showed that exposure to 2 watts per square
> centimetre for three seconds could damage the corneas of rhesus
> monkeys.
I think I read that the Soviets deployed some version of this (semi-coherent microwave source) precisely for burning corneas and blinding pilots in the '80s.
Chris