Death by fan...

Many Koreans believe that if you leave a fan on in your room while you sleep you will die.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I heard it a while ago from one of the students that I tutored at HSA and was flabbergasted.  Today, however, I found out it isn't just Koreans who believe in fan death but the Vietnamese as well.  Kathy reblogged a story on fan death and kindly informed everyone that her Mother use to yell at her when she slept with the fan on.

Now I've slept with the fan on for years.  I use to live in a loft which reached temperatures unimaginable in the summer and a fan was an absolute must.  Tonight I'll sleep with my fan on, too.  It's also notable to mention that I haven't died yet.

The most damage that fan will do is chop off your finger, not steal all of your oxygen.

So what are the pundits saying?

• Fan death is frequently cited when police detectives are unable to determine cause of death.
• That fans contribute to prolonged asphyxiation due to environmental oxygen displacement or carbon dioxide intoxication.
• That fans contribute to hypothermia, or abnormally low body temperature.
• That if the fan is put directly in front of the face of the sleeping person, it will suck all the air away, preventing one from breathing.
• That an electric fan chops up all the oxygen particles in the air leaving none to breathe.
• That an electric fan creates a vortex, which sucks the oxygen from the enclosed  aand sealed room and creates a partial vacuum inside.

The media in Korea often feeds the urban legend by regularly reporting on fan deaths.  

Thank god Korean Doctors don't believe it...

Dr. John Linton at Yonsei's Severance Hospital, who attended medical school at Yonsei University, is licensed to practice medicine in South Korea:^[2]

There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, things like pulmonary embolisms, cerebrovascular accidents or arrhythmia. There is little scientific evidenceto 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.

Dr. Lee Yoon-song is a professor at 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. But we can't really apply this to fan accidents. I found most of the victims already had some sort of disease like heart problems or serious alcoholism. So hypothermia is not the main reason for death, but it may contribute.

Please refer to this wikipedia page for more information on fan death.

This is a wonderful example of how bogus media can be and how many people BELIEVE anything the media tells them!  So think twice when you are watching your news or reading your paper..

and....

Run your fan at night, you won't die.  Trust me I do it ALL the TIME!  I'm going to tell every Korean that I run a fan while I sleep and try to get them to do the same.