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Fan death is a South Korean urban legend which states that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can cause the death (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia) of those inside. 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.[1]
The specifics behind belief in the myth of fan-death often offer 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. Examples for possible justifications of belief in fan death are as follows:
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.[11] Also included among the five hazards were air conditioner explosions, and sanitation issues, including food poisoning and opportunistic pathogens harbored in air conditioners. According to the KCPB:
Research suggests that fan use may be a contributing factor in heat-related deaths such as fatal cases of hyperthermia.[12] A U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association advises that “although the use of fans may increase comfort at temperatures less than 90°F (less than 32.2°C), fans are not protective against heatstroke when temperatures reach greater than or equal to 90°F (greater than or equal to 32.2°C) and humidity exceeds 35%,”[12] and provides a similar but simpler warning to the public on their website.[13] These temperature and humidity conditions are consistent with a death cited in an earlier article critical of fan death, which suggested that fan use was irrelevant.[3]
Texts on industrial hygiene and ventilation will describe conditions when the use of a fan will increase a worker’s heat load. Those conditions include very high temperatures found in foundries and similar industries like heat treating metals. Similar problems occur with high heat and high humidity.
A 2007 meta-analysis of studies on heat wave-related deaths explains that “a fan induces air movement that increases evaporation and lowers skin temperature, but in warm environments increased wind speeds of hot air can actually raise the skin temperature and thus produce opposite results by increasing core body temperature.”[14] The study concludes that definitive recommendations on fan use require further study.
An analysis of risk factors contributing to 700 “excess deaths” during a 1995 Chicago, Illinois, heat wave found no evidence that fans either increased or decreased mortality, but noted that “interpretation of the data on the use of fans is complicated by the need to take into account specific environmental factors (for example, whether the fan is used in a room with an open or a closed window) and the health status of individual subjects.”[15] Fear of crime was cited as a factor in people keeping windows and doors locked shut.
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