Death by Fan

The globe is warming. Don’t believe me? Believe NASA (http://www.edf.org/article.cfm?contentID=4981). More than 400 Americans died from heat-related illnesses last year. Heat kills more Americans than all natural disasters combined (http://www.slate.com/id/2068612/). If you think that turning on the fan at this point will better your odds of survival, think again.

The Korea Consumer Protection Board (KCPB), a South Korean government-funded public agency, issued a consumer safety alert in 2006 warning that “asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners” was among South Korea’s five most common seasonal summer accidents or injuries…according to data they collected. The alert read:

Doors should be left open when sleeping with the electric fan or air conditioner turned on

If bodies are exposed to electric fans or air conditioners for too long, it causes bodies to lose water and hypothermia. If directly in contact with a fan, this could lead to death from increase of carbon dioxide saturation concentration and decrease of oxygen concentration. The risks are higher for the elderly and patients with respiratory problems.

From 2003~2005, a total of 20 cases were reported through the CISS involving asphyxiations caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. To prevent asphyxiation, timers should be set, wind direction should be rotated and doors should be left open.

Gord Giesbrecht, professor of thermophysiology at the University of Manitoba in Canada, responds:

It’s hard to imagine death by fan, because to die of hypothermia, one’s body temperature would have to get down to 28 [°C], drop by 10 degrees [Celsius] overnight. We’ve got people lying in snowbanks overnight here in Winnipeg and they survive.

But hypothermia and oxygen displacement are but two of the many delirious justifications for fan death, as provided by both Korean government representative and experts alike:

• An electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed and sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.
  • What’s wrong with this? This explanation violates the principle of conservation of matter, as indoor fans are not powerful enough to change the air pressure by any significant amount.

• An electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe.
  • What’s wrong with this? This explanation violates mass conservation and well-known properties of molecules and gases.

• A fan, it put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.
  • What’s wrong with this? This explanation ignores that a fan attracts as much air to a given spot as it is removing from it, and that most people point a fan towards themselves when using one, which causes air to move past the face but does not change the amount of air present.

• That fans contribute to prolonged asphyxiation due to environmental oxygen displacement or carbon dioxide intoxication.
  • What’s wrong with this? The fan causes no actual conversion of oxygen to carbon dioxide; unlike a candle, the electric motor in a fan does not alter the chemical composition of the air.

What can we do!? Learn from the Red Kangaroo: http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/planet-earth-deserts-red-kangaroos.html

Additional reading: http://gypsyscholarship.blogspot.com/2006/09/fan-death-is-real_12.html