Are Infrared Heaters Safe

Summary: Infrared heater safety is the first thing that comes to a consumer’s mind when picking a heater for commercial or personal purpose. They become a necessity in winters and are also important in restaurants and other areas where controlled heat is required rather than the direct contact of the flames. Hence, it is important to go through infrared heater safety orientation before actually buying one.

How Safe are the Infrared Heaters?

An infrared heater is like an electric heater that is made to transfer its heat to the surroundings with a lower temperature. The infrared heaters use either fuel to heat the main emitter, or an electrically heated filament as the emitting body. The heated filament is protected by a heat resistant quartz glass tube. Sometimes, high power halogen lamps are also used and these emitters use the same principles as the light bulb.

Electric infrared heaters are a lot safer than those that are operated using gas. Using gas in a heater is extremely dangerous especially if the heater is to be used for a very long time. One must monitor the temperature of the room instead of blindly leaving the gas heater on. Numerous deaths have occurred because people tend to turn on their gas heaters and go to sleep, the excess gas and heat in the room causes people to suffocate and die. In the case of infrared heaters, safety is much better because the heater is not emitting any harmful gases. However, leaving on any sort of heater for a very long time can be very dangerous since excess heat can easily suffocate someone. Hence, it is important to switch off infrared heaters before going to sleep.

Safety in infrared heaters also comes in question if a product or an object is placed too close to it. Direct contact or close proximity to the heater can cause the subject, be it a thing or a human being, to burn and in some very worst case scenarios have major skin problems that eventually will lead to skin cancer.

Applications of infrared heaters include factory heating, plastic welding, browning food, providing animals with warmth etc. It is always better to use the electric infrared heaters because their temperature can be controlled and they are much safer than the gas fired. Since the over exposure of skin and objects is so dangerous, it is important to monitor the temperature of infrared heaters.

Over exposure of the body to the heat can also cause aqueous humor in the eye. The disturbance of this thick watery substance in the eye can easily affect a person’s vision. This is why it is important to provide workers with safety clothing and headgear when they are working near strongly powered heaters in factories.

Infrared heater safety is extremely important but it would be foolish to completely stop taking advantage of the product just because there is a risk. If proper precautions are taken and good quality heaters are bought, safety will definitely be not an issue.

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