re Infrared Heating Lamps Harmful to the Human Body?

Author:

xiaolanjing

When it comes to infrared heating lamps, many people ask me: are infrared lamps harmful to the human body? Today, let me popularize this question.

Light itself is, at its core, electromagnetic waves — encompassing infrared rays, visible light, and ultraviolet rays — only with frequencies far higher than the radio waves used in mobile communications. In fact, when it comes to infrared, most of us have only a vague understanding, because infrared is invisible and intangible to us. Only infrared with very short wavelengths (800–1000 nm) can be seen through a phone camera; our human eyes cannot see infrared at all. Infrared is applied in many fields — for example, tubular heaters based on the principle of infrared, which feature excellent quality, high thermal efficiency, high power density, rapid temperature rise, energy savings, and long lifespan, and are widely used in daily life.

Infrared and visible light are harmless to the human body. Moderate exposure to ultraviolet rays can even help sterilize, but overexposure is harmful to the body — for instance, causing cancer. Sunlight contains ultraviolet rays. At frequencies even higher than light are X-rays, gamma rays, cosmic rays, and others; among these, X-rays commonly used in hospital chest X-ray equipment are certainly harmful to the human body if one is exposed to them over the long term. Historically, there have been cases of cancer caused by long-term X-ray exposure.

The damaging effect of infrared in sunlight on the skin differs from that of ultraviolet. Ultraviolet mainly triggers photochemical reactions and photoimmunological reactions, whereas the reactions caused by infrared exposure result from molecular vibration and elevated temperature. The thermal radiation from infrared heating lamps penetrates the skin more deeply than ultraviolet. Between 25% and 65% of its radiation can reach the epidermis and dermis, and 8% to 17% can reach the subcutaneous tissue. Through its thermal radiation effect, infrared raises skin temperature, dilates capillaries, causes congestion, and increases epidermal water evaporation — direct adverse effects on the skin. These mainly manifest as red papules, premature skin aging, and pigment disorders. Elevated skin temperature, capillary dilation, congestion, and increased epidermal water evaporation are the direct adverse impacts on the skin.

Infrared can also reinforce the damaging effect of ultraviolet on the skin, accelerating the skin aging process. Under the same sunscreen product and the same UV intensity, the SPF value (sun protection factor) measured under natural outdoor sunlight is clearly lower than the sun protection efficacy measured under laboratory artificial light sources. This is because, under natural sunlight, the skin is subjected to the dual effects of ultraviolet and infrared. Infrared and ultraviolet play the same role in accelerating tissue degeneration. Infrared can also promote the development of skin cancer caused by ultraviolet.

In short, the infrared heating lamp itself is not "harmful radiation." As long as you maintain distance and control exposure time, normal use is safe.

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Lanjing Optoelectronic Debuts at the 20th Zhuhai International Office Equipment & Consumables Exhibition, Deepening Cooperation and Seizing New Market Opportunities