Infrared lights are increasingly used on patios to provide thermal comfort to outdoor areas of commercial establishments, providing heat and extending customer stays even on the coldest and harshest winter nights. However, innovative instant heating technology is not always the most suitable from a safety standpoint. Is this infrared light safe? Let's take a closer look at how infrared radiation works and how it affects the human body.
 
A room or object can be heated by contact or non-contact. Contact heating is called conduction if there is a heat source, and convection is if it is in contact with a heating medium such as air. If heating is by contact, the hotter source transfers heat to the cooler source, which then heats to achieve thermal equilibrium.
 
Infrared (IR) lamps, on the other hand, use non-contact heating, which is achieved by irradiation and radiation at infrared wavelengths. If the object to be heated has an absorption coefficient, the process can be optimized in terms of efficiency. This corresponds to the action spectrum of the lamps used. This type of infrared can be short wave (IR – A), medium wave (IR – B), or long wave (IR – C).
 
Objects irradiated by a heat source. In this case, infrared light absorbs at least 92% of the energy provided by the source. Although lamps are named according to the type of wave they emit, long, medium, or short, the waves actually emitted are by no means a single type but have different wavelengths due to interference with other waves of the same type.