en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_Death
Many people in South Korea believe that when operated in closed rooms, electric fans cause sudden death, suffocating victims by stealing their oxygen. Many people in South Korea believe that when operated in closed rooms, electric fans cause sudden death, suffocating victims by stealing their oxygen.
This belief also extends to air conditioners and the fans in cars. When the air conditioner or fan is on in a car, some people are apt to leave their car windows open a crack to avoid "fan death." Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.
edit Beliefs The belief in the myth of fan-death often offers several explanations for the precise mechanism by which the fan kills. However, as explained below, these beliefs do not stand up to logical and scientific scrutiny.
As the metabolism slows down at night, one becomes more sensitive to temperature, and thus supposedly more prone to hypothermia. If the fan is left on all night in a sealed and enclosed room, believers in fan death suppose that it will lower the temperature of the room to the point that it can cause hypothermia. Empirical measurements will show, however, that the temperature in the room does not fall, at least not due to the fan; if at all, it should rise slightly because of friction and the heat output of the fan motor, but even this is generally not significant. Fans actually make one cooler by increasing the convection around a person's body so that heat flows from them to the air more easily, and by the latent heat of vapourisation as perspiration evaporates from the body.
Electric fans sold in Korea are equipped with a "timer knob" switch, which turns them off after a set number of minutes: perceived as a life-saving function, particularly essential for bed-time use. Electric fans sold in Korea are equipped with a "timer knob" switch, which turns them off after a set number of minutes: perceived as a life-saving function, particularly essential for bed-time use.
edit Media coverage The explanation of fan death is accepted by many Korean medical professionals. In summer, mainstream Korean news sources regularly report on cases of fan death.
English-language newspaper: The heat wave which has encompassed Korea for about a week, has generated various heat-related accidents and deaths. At least 10 people died from the effects of electric fans which can remove oxygen from the air and lower body temperatures... On Friday in eastern Seoul, a 16-year-old girl died from suffocation after she fell asleep in her room with an electric fan in motion. The death toll from fan-related incidents reached 10 during the past week. Medical experts say that this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area. "Excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one's temperature and hampers blood circulation. And it eventually leads to the paralysis of heart and lungs," says a medical expert. "To prevent such an accident, one should keep the windows open and not expose oneself directly to fan air," he advised.
Hypothermia does not only occur in the winter when it is cold. The symptoms can also take place if a person has been drinking and turns on a fan in a closed room. Most people wake up when they feel cold, but if you are drunk you will not wake up, even if your body temperature drops below 35 degrees Celsius, at which point you can die from hypothermia. It doesn't matter so much about the temperature of the room. If it is completely sealed, then in the current of an electric fan, the temperature can drop low enough to cause a person to die of hypothermia.
Maybe if someone was elderly and they were sitting there for three days in a sealed room with an electric fan turned on. Someone is not going to die from hypothermia because their body temperature drops two or three degrees overnight;
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.
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.
Korean media for the persistence of the urban legend: Korean reporters are constantly writing inaccurate articles about death by fan, describing these deaths as being caused by the fan. That's why it seems that fan deaths only happen in Korea, when in reality these types of deaths are quite rare.
lung disease, which are the main cause of death in these cases. If a Western doctor investigated these deaths, he would say what really caused the death, and say that a fan was beside the victim.
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