Ok, so when I first heard about "fan death" I thought it was completely ridiculous. Seriously? Death-by-fan? And not like a hand-held fan like the type used by Jackie Chan to kick some guys butt... but those fun osculating fans that you used to speak into when you were a lil kid to hear your voice change into a robot's.
"How," you may ask? Well, the fan creates a vortex and sucks out all the oxygen and then you suffocate. That is, if you leave it on in a room and close all the windows and doors.
~OR~ (equally as crazy) Since you breathe through your skin, and the fan blows on your body... the fast moving air from the fan makes skin-breathing difficult and you suffocate that way. One friend even explained that when you get goosebumps your pores close up and you can't breathe through your skin, and fans give you goosebumps. Hence, death.
Since America is one of the most advanced countries in the world scientifically, etc, and it has never been mentioned there... I passed this off for utter nonsense and complete (albeit, hilarious) urban legend.
However, today something changed my mind.
This article. Along with
this pamphlet by the United States EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).
Basically, a section in there states that when you use a fan in temperatures above 99 degrees F, you are more likely to get heat exhaustion or a heat stroke, due to the cooling effect with your evaporating sweat and the circulation of hot air. If you don't have a window or a door open, your room becomes like an oven and you get hyperthermia.
After I saw the facts, I realized I had the "
Korean Derangement Syndrome." I didn't think I was one of "those kinds" of foreigners... but so many of the things in Korea that seem odd to me or "mis-practiced" (like their dentistry--seriously, what kind of dentists don't check for cavities???), I'd just write off as ridiculous.
Well, my opinion has changed--a little. Why not completely? Because there are other factors than besides just the fan. Like the persons age, and if they have any other medical conditions that could be aggravated by intense heat.
Korea's own prove this point (from Wiki):
Dr. John Linton at Yonsei's Severance Hospital, who attended medical school at Yonsei University, is licensed to practice medicine in South Korea:[2]
There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, things like
pulmonary embolisms,
cerebrovascular accidents or
arrhythmia. There is little
scientific evidence to support that a fan alone can kill you if you are using it in a sealed room. Although it is a common belief among Koreans, there are other explainable reasons for why these deaths are happening.
Dr. Lee Yoon-song is a professor at Seoul National University's medical school and works with the school's Institute of Scientific Investigation. He has conducted autopsies on some of the people who have been described in Korean media as having succumbed to fan death:
When someone's body temperature drops below 35 degrees, they do start to lose judgment ability. So if someone was hiking and later found dead, that could be part of the reason. But we can't really apply this to fan accidents. I found most of the victims already had some sort of disease like heart problems or serious
alcoholism. So hypothermia is not the main reason for death, but it may contribute.
So there you have it, folks. It's real. And extremely rare.
