Apparently, Fan Death is appallingly easy to contract: it is said that all one has to do to is fall asleep in a room with the windows and doors closed and an electric fan blowing air at you. Exactly how these conditions can cause Fan Death is debated, but despite this lack of consensus, it is generally agreed by believers that the symptoms of fan death can be quite severe.
But what makes this mysterious, deadly, and easily-contracted affliction really interesting is that it is taken very seriously by citizens, media, government agencies, and makers of electric fans alike - but only in Korea (at least, in South Korea). In the remainder of the world, Fan Death is generally regarded as being little more than a quaint superstition.
So unless you are from Korea, it might seem as if I am taking aim at an easy target. If this is the case, you might be surprised at how readily the truth can be spun; at how easily even the airiest-sounding of ideas can be made to sound plausible; and how difficult it can be to distinguish reality from the fantastical.
That is, except for one: although it might look like a circular argument, I'm going to propose that the single biggest reason that Fan Death is taken so seriously in Korea, is simply because so many Korean people take Fan Death seriously. Bare with me here.
I came to this conclusion when I realized that the only reason I had had such an amused initial reaction to Fan Death is because I had never heard of it before. Without me really being aware of it, my mind had reasoned that this safety-obsessed culture I live in could not possibly have failed to warn me of such a danger: fans are just too ubiquitous; and death is just too serious a safety concern. In other words, I unconsciously reasoned that:
What I did not do before having a chuckle at the expense of the superstitious Koreans, is go through all the different possible ways that Fan Death could possibly work, and rule each of them out in turn. Neither did I even try to remember if I, or anyone I knew, had ever slept in a sealed room with a fan on and lived to talk about it. I didn't feel I had to. My point is that, no doubt like many of you, I automatically judged the idea of Fan Death, not by assessing it's scientific merits, but by unconsciously assessing it's popularity with my peers.
On the other hand, imagine for a moment that you have grown up in South Korea, and that you have been warned of Fan Death all your life. The fans in your home are all equipped with timers for the expressed purpose of preventing fan death; and the mainstream Korean media is telling you that Fan Death has claimed yet another victim this summer. On top of all of this, you have been given not one but several plausible-sounding explanations as to how it could possibly occur (if you doubt these exist, just wait). Were this the case, it seems to me that you might well risk superstition for the sake of prudence.
(This disturbing study, linked to previously in my post on Skepticism, provides some justification for this idea of self-perpetuating popular belief.)
But this, of course, doesn't explain how belief in Fan Death became so widespread in the first place. To this end I have heard speculation that the Korean government invented Fan Death to help save electricity during a shortage. But strange beliefs are by no means restricted to Korea, and so I wonder how worth my while it is to even explore this question. So, unless there is an objection, I'll just chalk the origins of Fan Death up to "historical accident", and instead discuss the "scientific" "explanations" for it.
But what makes this mysterious, deadly, and easily-contracted affliction really interesting is that it is taken very seriously by citizens, media, government agencies, and makers of electric fans alike - but only in Korea (at least, in South Korea). In the remainder of the world, Fan Death is generally regarded as being little more than a quaint superstition.
So unless you are from Korea, it might seem as if I am taking aim at an easy target. If this is the case, you might be surprised at how readily the truth can be spun; at how easily even the airiest-sounding of ideas can be made to sound plausible; and how difficult it can be to distinguish reality from the fantastical.
Part I : Why Korea?
If you're like me, your first reaction to the idea of Fan Death is amusement: How could a fan kill you? How could such a strange belief become so widespread? What an strange place Korea must be. But the fact is that South Korea is actually a well-educated, modernized, and tech-savvy first-world country; and I am currently unaware of any good reasons why Koreans should be more predisposed than the rest of us to be credulous of Fan Death stories (I am consciously ignoring the ideas that Koreans are somehow more susceptible to Fan Death than others, or are simply more inclined to be superstitious.)That is, except for one: although it might look like a circular argument, I'm going to propose that the single biggest reason that Fan Death is taken so seriously in Korea, is simply because so many Korean people take Fan Death seriously. Bare with me here.
I came to this conclusion when I realized that the only reason I had had such an amused initial reaction to Fan Death is because I had never heard of it before. Without me really being aware of it, my mind had reasoned that this safety-obsessed culture I live in could not possibly have failed to warn me of such a danger: fans are just too ubiquitous; and death is just too serious a safety concern. In other words, I unconsciously reasoned that:
a) if Fan Death were real, it is the kind of thing I would have heard of previously; and
b) because I had not previously heard of Fan Death, it was probably not real.
What I did not do before having a chuckle at the expense of the superstitious Koreans, is go through all the different possible ways that Fan Death could possibly work, and rule each of them out in turn. Neither did I even try to remember if I, or anyone I knew, had ever slept in a sealed room with a fan on and lived to talk about it. I didn't feel I had to. My point is that, no doubt like many of you, I automatically judged the idea of Fan Death, not by assessing it's scientific merits, but by unconsciously assessing it's popularity with my peers.
On the other hand, imagine for a moment that you have grown up in South Korea, and that you have been warned of Fan Death all your life. The fans in your home are all equipped with timers for the expressed purpose of preventing fan death; and the mainstream Korean media is telling you that Fan Death has claimed yet another victim this summer. On top of all of this, you have been given not one but several plausible-sounding explanations as to how it could possibly occur (if you doubt these exist, just wait). Were this the case, it seems to me that you might well risk superstition for the sake of prudence.
(This disturbing study, linked to previously in my post on Skepticism, provides some justification for this idea of self-perpetuating popular belief.)
But this, of course, doesn't explain how belief in Fan Death became so widespread in the first place. To this end I have heard speculation that the Korean government invented Fan Death to help save electricity during a shortage. But strange beliefs are by no means restricted to Korea, and so I wonder how worth my while it is to even explore this question. So, unless there is an objection, I'll just chalk the origins of Fan Death up to "historical accident", and instead discuss the "scientific" "explanations" for it.
Part II : Four Ways a Fan can Kick Your Sleeping Ass
1. Fan-blades can slice up oxygen molecules, degrading the air and causing asphyxiation.
Here is an awesome video that explains with apparent sincerity and in great technical detail how this supposedly happens. ("Ouch!" hehe)
One of the many problems with this explanation, of course, is that it forgets just how small oxygen molecules really are. When their true size is appreciated (to the extent this is humanly possible), it becomes clear that the spinning blades of a fan are no more likely to split apart molecules than is a swinging baseball bat. So this hypothesis is not going to win everyone over to the idea of Fan Death, but it's probably enough to at least sow doubt in the minds of a few.
2. Fans can create an oxygen vacuum in a room which can cause asphyxiation.
Okay, so this one is also fairly easy to discount. After all, picture submerging your bedroom in a huge tank of water, and then turning on a propeller and expecting all the water to leave. Or, if you prefer, imagine submerging your bedroom in water that has been dyed (say, purple) and expecting the fan to separate the dye from the water.
If your bedroom is small and completely air-tight, then you might be in danger of asphyxiating in your sleep, but this has nothing to do with Fan Death.
But while this explanation might not make you fear Fan Death either, it too can easily give birth to doubts. For examples: what if a fan decreases the amount of oxygen in each breath ever so slightly? couldn't this have eventual evil effects (after all, just look at what wind turbines can do to bats)? what if a fan can cause you to re-breath the same air more often than usual, causing CO2 poisoning? What if the fan itself uses up a bit of oxygen as it functions? One could fill volumes demystifying this seemingly ridiculous idea. But if you're still laughing at Fan Death, just wait: there's more.
3. Fans can lower your body temperature as you sleep, causing hypothermia.
Now we are getting to the good stuff. The whole point of a fan is to keep you cool, so it is impossible to deny that they can have this effect. But could they really cause hypothermia?
My first thought about this is that when I get cold at night I tend to wake up and do something about it. And anyway, why do the windows and doors of your room have to be shut for Fan Death to work this way? A fan is not going to actually lower the temperature in you room: fans primarily work by blowing the air that has been warmed by your body away from you, not by actively cooling like air conditioners do. So maybe this isn't the greatest theory, either.
Still, more doubt has been sown: we've admitted that fans can cool you. And because if you get too cool you can get hypothermia; and because if you get hypothermia you can die; this might well be enough to make people decide that, where Fan Death is concerned, they are better off safe than sorry. Sure enough, some Fan Death-ers fear that air conditioners can also be lethal.
4. Fans can raise your body temperature as you sleep, causing dehydration and hyperthermia.
But, strangely, Fan Death has also been attributed to a fan's ability to make you too hot.
In this post from the blog Ask a Korean, the authorr (who refers to themselves only as "the Korean") makes a case for Fan Death by claiming that fans can effectively turn a bedroom into "a gigantic turbo oven". I doubt this analogy is entirely justified, but the Korean seems to have converted more than one literate Westerner to Fan Death-ism.
According to this theory, during extreme heat waves electric fans can cause victims to dry out like panties on a clothesline, and thus put them at risk of heat stroke. Actually, this is easily the best explanation for Fan Death I have yet heard. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself notes that electric fans "will not prevent heat-related illness" in severe heat; and as we all know (let's be honest), panties do dry out faster in the wind than they do otherwise. So it really does appear to be true that electric fans can be detrimental to your health during intense heat waves.
Well congratulations, we've proven that Fan Death is indeed theoretically possible. Or, at least, we've proven that fans are not of much help to those who are very young, old, or drunk (or some combination thereof), and also dying of heat stroke. But taken together, all this has proven enough to cause many, many smart and well-educated people to claim that "Fan Death is real."
Personally, I don't feel quite so bold: all that I feel comfortable doing is recommending that you take a nice, long nap in front of a cool, breezy fan if you ever feel the urge to commit suicide.
* * *
By way of this post, hopefully I have demonstrated why this might be. It has often been said that "you can't disprove the existence of God", but it can be instructive how difficult it can be to disprove claims as seemingly vulnerable to testing as "saunas are good for you" or "fan death is real". If you begin with the question "is fan death real?" (or "does God exist?" / "Are saunas good for you?"), and start to search for any possible way to justify an affirmative answer, the chances are good that you will apparently find a way to do it: you are just more likely to end up with the answer that you expected (or wanted) to get.
A much better approach, I think, is to first ask ourselves how likely it is that a given hypothesis is true; and whether or not there is a good reason to even be asking the question in the first place. And don't take an idea seriously just because your friends do; be aware that, in Korea as elsewhere, popularity masquerades as plausibility.
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