When fans attack
It’s funny because it’s true
Trevor Bekolay
It’s summer: muggy, hot, and you don’t have air conditioning. Before calling it a night, you switch on your electrical fan to cool off. Little do you know . . . it’s the last thing you’ll ever do!
At least that’s what is commonly believed in South Korea. If the doors and windows are closed, falling asleep with an electrical fan blowing on your face can kill you. Fan death, as it’s called, seems absurd; yet in South Korea it is regarded as a real and dangerous phenomenon. Government agencies warn that fan death is one of the top five summer accidents. Media such as Mongdori report on multiple fan death cases every summer. Fans in Korea are sold with sleep timers and instructions to set the timer before falling asleep. Even Korean medical professionals warn people to avoid sleeping in closed rooms with a fan blowing. How do these fans actually kill people?
Well, they don’t. But, like most cautionary urban legends, there are explanations that sound plausible. One Korean doctor claims that fans cool down the body enough to cause hypothermia. Since the room itself is hot, it may not seem like hypothermia is an issue — that’s how the fan gets you! Before you know it, your core temperature’s below 35 C and the fan has claimed another victim.
U of M professor Gord Giesbrecht grounds us back in reality. To die of hypothermia overnight your body temperature needs to drop to 28 C. An electric fan simply cannot do this, try as it might. Further, there has been no evidence that supposed fan-death victims have lowered core body temperatures. If hypothermia was the root cause of death, it would be easy to test for (by taking a core body temperature the following morning), lending credence to the phenomenon of fan death and making satirical articles like this one significantly less hilarious.
Another explanation for fan death is asphyxiation. Some claim that air blowing directly in your face can create a small vacuum around the facial region, disrupting normal breathing. Others claim that the fan blows oxygen away from you while contributing to a buildup of carbon dioxide, eventually leading to suffocation. This is exacerbated because some South Koreans sleep on traditional floor mats; carbon dioxide is heavier than air and will concentrate near the floor.
These are pretty ridiculous claims. Blowing air around does not create a vacuum, and fans neither consume oxygen nor produce carbon dioxide. They can only move the gases that already exist in the room — if anything, fans can ensure that carbon dioxide doesn’t collect on the floor and stays mixed in the air. Yes, if a room in completely sealed, then human respiration can cause a buildup of carbon dioxide, but fans should not be blamed for the misguided hands of interior designers.
So then, why is fan death still treated as fact in South Korea, even among highly educated professionals?
I would argue that it has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. One grows up hearing about the dangers of sleeping with the fan on, and with each new fan death victim that’s reported, the fear grows. Sure, it seems ridiculous, but come on, it’s not like it’ll kill you to crack a window. Eventually one stops questioning the idea altogether.
Considering a myth as a fact has far-reaching ramifications. Once fan death is regarded as factual, it becomes a plausible explanation for someone’s death — a sad concept, because the true cause of death is not examined. Even though the actual cause of death may have been a heart attack or stroke, if it occurred in someone’s sleep and they had a fan on at the time, a sad event is now also more evidence that fan death is threatening us all.
This brings up another head-scratcher. Can you be charged with attempted murder by fan? There’s nothing stopping you from sneaking into people’s rooms and cranking that fan full blast right in their faces.
There doesn’t seem to be a precedent for this in South Korea, which seems a bit odd if fan death really is a common summer accident. Perhaps this point leads to the heart of why fan death persists in South Korean culture: fan death is a respectable synonym for suicide. On one hand, perpetuating an urban legend pollutes a society’s common knowledge, but on the other, dealing with suicide can be a painful experience. Personally, I would rather have the truth.
Whatever the case may be, fan death is an interesting urban legend that is believed by over 40 million people. Knowing about it won’t save your life, but it might save you when you need to make small-talk around the water cooler.
Trevor Bekolay is a fourth-year computer science student that bravely tested this urban legend — for science.
