Can I use ozone in a wooden sauna?

This is one of the more expensive mistakes a buyer can make, because a wooden sauna is often already installed and the temptation is to add a generator to it. The same reasoning applies to a far infrared sauna, an infrared blanket or a fabric steam tent not designed for ozone.

We give two specific objections:

1. Your head is inside. Most wooden saunas have no head aperture. Ozone is harmful to the respiratory system and eyes in quantity, which is why our fibreglass saunas seal at the neck and leave the head outside the chamber, so you breathe ordinary room air throughout. Sitting in an ozone-filled wooden sauna means breathing ozone for the whole session.
2. No medical oxygen source. A wooden sauna cannot be connected to a medical oxygen supply in the way a purpose-built ozone cabinet is. Ozone generated from ambient air carries whatever else is in the air through the generator, and the term medical ozone means ozone made from a medical oxygen source.

Three practical points. Ozone equipment uses ozone-resistant materials — glass, PTFE, silicone, 304 and 316 stainless steel — because most others degrade on prolonged ozone contact. A wooden sauna cannot be cleaned the way an ozone sauna is meant to be — wiped after every session and washed with soap and warm water weekly. And a retrofitted generator has no adjustable output tied to the cabinet’s controls, so there is no way to start a new user low and increase gradually.

If you already own a wooden sauna and want ozone therapy, treat them as two separate pieces of equipment rather than trying to combine them. Use the wooden sauna for dry heat, and use a sauna built for ozone — head outside, ozone-resistant internals, a medical oxygen feed and adjustable output — for the ozone.