South Korea producing more engineering graduates than the US

[Ian David]

2. But they all think leaving an electric fan on while you sleep will kill you.

Korean Fan Death

Skeptoid #287
December 06, 2011
Podcast transcript

Today we're going to point the skeptical eye at a traditional belief from Korea, one at which many Westerners merely scoff. Many Koreans believe that sleeping in a room with an electric fan running is potentially lethal, even to the point that many Korean doctors and safety agencies formally warn against doing so. Scientists outside of Korea, however, easily dismiss the deaths as misdiagnoses of other conditions, and handily debunk the proposed mechanisms for the danger as implausible. But some Koreans have countered that there must be some explanation unique to Korea or Koreans: something to do with physiology, geography, or even their particular electric fans. Could Koreans be right that there is something more to this urban legend than mere tradition and confirmation bias?

Korean fan death isn't very old; not even going back as far as the use of electric fans in the country. The first electricity was installed at Gyeongbok Palace in 1887, just a few years after Schuyler Wheeler made the first two-bladed electric fans commercially available. By 1900, companies like Toshiba were manufacturing and selling electric fans throughout Asia. Despite nearly a century of history of usage without incident, in the 1970s the Korean media suddenly began reporting cases of fan death. They happened in the summer, in a closed room, and usually involved an elderly person sleeping alone, with an electric fan running in the room. In the morning, the victim would be found dead, with the only evident cause of death being the electric fan still sitting there, blowing its supposedly lethal breeze.

The situation today is that government safety agencies warn that fans must be used safely. The Korea Consumer Protection Board analyzed reports of heat-related injuries during the summer months for the three years prior to 2006, and made recommendations to address the five most often recurring dangers, with the first on the list being that doors should be left open when using electric fans or air conditioning.


Fan death warning label
(Public domain image)

More:
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4287