South Koreans believe that using an electric fan in a sealed room for many hours can cause “fan death”. Theories include suffocation, carbon dioxide poisoning, and hypothermia. However, there is little evidence to support these claims, and skeptics suggest other causes such as carbon monoxide poisoning or electrocution. The South Korean government issues warnings and electric fans come with automatic shutdown timers to prevent “fan death”.
Anyone shopping for an electric fan in South Korea might notice something unusual; an automatic shutdown timer. This is a popular method of preventing what a number of South Koreans refer to as fan death. Fan death presumably occurs whenever an electric fan is used for many hours in a sealed room.
It is not the fan itself that causes the death of the fan due to physical injury or electric shock, but rather the cumulative effect of the circulating air. Some believe that the rotating blades of the fan create a partial vacuum or vortex near a sleeper’s face, causing disruption to normal breathing and eventually fatal suffocation. Others suggest that the fan somehow depletes the available oxygen, allowing the room to fill up with deadly carbon dioxide. A third theory attributes the ventilator’s death to gradual hypothermia as the circulating air lowers the sleeper’s body temperature. Paradoxically, others believe that the fan’s death is caused by hyperthermia as circulating warm air raises a sleeper’s body temperature during a heat wave.
The urban legend of the fans’ deaths appears to be limited to South Korea. Stories have circulated in that country for decades of victims discovered in small, enclosed rooms with no obvious contributing factors other than the presence of an electric fan. Depending on the circumstances, a victim of a fan’s death could have frozen to death, suffered heatstroke, or suffocated for no apparent reason. These reports tend to be attributed to a very small newspaper or a “friend of a friend” who heard of a similar fan-death incident years earlier. Skeptics of the ventilator death phenomenon suggest that the true cause of death in these cases may have been carbon monoxide poisoning, an existing physical condition, or electrocution from an improperly wired appliance. The fact that a common household appliance such as an electric fan was present in the room could very well be a coincidence.
While an electric fan can certainly create a circulating vortex of disturbed air, there is very little evidence to support the fan’s suffocation theory of death. Such a vortex would have to be exceptionally powerful to suffocate an average human being, and most users place an electric fan in one direction that blows air toward their faces while they sleep. While this constant stream of air could cause mild dehydration, it wouldn’t be powerful enough to completely disrupt normal breathing. Even if the fan were placed in the opposite direction, the air displaced by the fan would immediately be replaced by more air. Since it would be extremely difficult to completely seal the doors and windows in a room, fresh air is also likely to enter the room and disrupt any suffocating swirls.
Also, a circulation fan cannot convert oxygen to carbon dioxide by mechanical methods alone. The sleeper’s breathing would be more responsible for introducing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and all the electric ventilator would do is mix oxygen and carbon dioxide together. Eventually the carbon dioxide concentration could reach toxic levels if the room were perfectly sealed, but the chances of such a lethal event occurring within hours would be very low. The electric fan itself cannot be held responsible for a death caused by carbon dioxide exposure. A better argument could be made for dehydration after hours of exposure to a constant stream of air, but the odds of an electric fan removing enough fluid from the sleeper’s body to cause the fan to die would be extremely slim.
The circulating air generated by an electric fan has a cooling effect on the sleeper’s body as sweat evaporates and lowers the body temperature. In theory, a powerful air conditioner set to maximum cooling could cause a dangerous drop in the sleeper’s body temperature over time, but an electric fan uses no refrigerants. The room’s ambient temperature would also have to drop to dangerously cold levels for the fan’s circulating air to become a factor. The ventilator’s death from hypothermia could easily be attributed to ambient room temperature or exposure to outside elements. The same goes for an electric fan that circulates warm air during a heat wave. The fan does not affect the temperature of the air itself, so a person’s death could be attributed to the effects of heat exhaustion or heatstroke.
While many other countries consider the death of fans little more than a South Korean urban legend, the South Korean government and many health officials still issue warnings about using electric fans in small rooms with limited ventilation. The timer units on South Korean electric fans are supposed to prevent the death of the fan by shutting off the air circulation after a certain number of hours. This would allow gases heavier than carbon dioxide to remain separate from the breathing oxygen in the room. Also, a sleeper would not risk dehydration after hours of exposure to constant airflow, and their body temperature would not be raised or lowered to dangerous levels during the night.
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