The effect of electron cyclotron resonance heating induced suprathermal electron tails on the ionization of iron impurities in magnetically confined plasmas is investigated. The behaviour of plasma emissivity immediately after injection provides evidence of a spatially localized 'shift' towards higher charge states of the impurity. Bearing in mind that the non-inductive plasma heating methods generate long lasting non-Maxwellian distribution functions, possible implications on the deduced impurity transport coefficients, when fast electrons are present, are discussed.