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August 2020
blast from the past
18 Blast from the Past 18
We have heard that the summer may provide a respite from the ravages of the coronavirus; however, we should be careful not to let our guard down too much as there are other dangers that summer temperatures in Korea can pose: heat cramps, heat exhaustion, heat stroke, and possibly the most dreaded of all, fan death. Fan death has been taken quite seriously in Korea, especially as the use of electric fans first spread to the general population, much like the fear of the coronavirus after its introduction into Korea. What follows is an article on “Fan Death” written by Stephen Redeker, which first appeared in the February 2012 issue of the Gwangju News, now supplemented with additional material. — Ed.
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n this issue, we explore death by a handy little appliance to cool us off in the summer: the electric fan. How is it that such a seemingly benign device could cause a nation to change its sleeping habits? Why do most of the fans in Korea have timers on them? If you do not know the answers to these questions, reading further could save your life (or at least enlighten you about one of Korea’s most infamous modern-day beliefs).
“Fan death” (seonpunggi samang, 선풍기 사망) is the name given to the belief that going to sleep in an enclosed room with an electric fan blowing directly on an individual could be fatal. According to a 2005 press release by the Korea Consumer Protection Board (KCPB),[1] a government-funded agency, “asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners” was one of the five leading causes of summer injuries in the three-year period of 2003–2005, based on an analysis of data collected by the Consumer Injury Surveillance System (CISS). The press release also mentions how direct, prolonged contact with a blowing fan could cause hypothermia (a dangerous drop in body temperature) or lead to death from too much carbon dioxide and not enough oxygen. The KCPB also reported twenty cases of asphyxiation in the same three-year period that were caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. It was suggested that to prevent this, doors should be left open when going to sleep, fans should be oscillating, and timers should be set to turn the fans off automatically rather than run all night (this last item explains why most Korean fans come equipped with timers).
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South Korea is the only country in the world with a widespread belief that fans can cause someone to die while asleep. Perhaps the reason why no other country promotes this notion is that there is no substantial evidence to support it. There are, however, more than a few theories of why “fan death-related symptoms” could occur, but none of them are likely to be fatal. For example, a household electric fan is not strong enough to create a vacuum in a room that would make it difficult to breathe. Nor can a fan critically affect the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide because its blades cannot chop up the molecules, and its electric motor hardly uses any oxygen to operate. There are no fatal amounts of ozone emitted from an electric fan. When it comes to hypothermia, the room would already need to be extremely cold for this to occur, and a blowing fan cannot cause the temperature in an enclosed room to drop that drastically. If any of these scenarios came even close to occurring, the person would most likely wake up from the discomfort. A number of medical professionals have said that fan death is impossible. One such person is Dr. Lee Yoon-song, a professor at Seoul National University’s medical school. He has performed autopsies on some media-reported “fan death victims.” He found that the main cause of death was not from the fan itself (although it might have sped things up). Most of the victims were elderly people who were already afflicted with severe health issues such as heart or lung disease, or alcoholism. He says that the media does not do a good job in reporting the facts when they publish stories about deaths where electric fans are
7/27/2020 12:27:48 PM
