Ridiculous. The fan would not do anything that a light bulb of equivalent wattage wouldn't also do.
Someone who asserts that fans can kill people is making an extraordinary claim, and needs to supply extraordinary proof, such as citing a verifiable case where it happened.
It sounds like you haven't read the post I linked to, which explains what fans do that light bulbs don't, cites verifiable cases, and explains the theory.
Your comment, of course, is ridiculous. If a fan didn't do anything a lightbulb didn't do, then why would people buy fans? Lightbulbs are much cheaper!
> Similarly, in a heated room without an outside source of airflow, very hot air is constantly pushed directly to your body, which is a far more effective way of raising your body temperature rather than “baking” in hot air. If you get enough of this, you would die – of hyperthermia, or abnormally high body temperature
For the air to actually heat your body enough to kill you, you need:
* Room temperature that is high enough to kill you (>43 degrees celcius). Any temperature below this -- and the fan helps avoid hyperthermia by averaging out the body temperature with the environment.
* You have to be fully dehydrated, otherwise even air hotter than your body will cool you up.
* According to http://www.mherrera.org/temp.htm no place in Korea ever exceeded 40.3 celsius degrees between 2002 and 2012. So if you slept with a fan, during the hottest day of the hottest city in Korea, you'd still not be hot enough to be killed.
If you sleep on on extremely hot days (not nights), with (>43C) a fan directly aimed at you may increase the risk of hyperthermia (which exists anyway). However, on any day with more than 36 degrees Celsius, you are unlikely to leave a fan directed at you, because it will feel warmer than without the fan.
In short, it is a silly urban legend, more likely to cause hyperthermia in people who are afraid to use fans to lower their temperatures during the night.
The linked post is long and rambles a bit, and I only skimmed it, but I've come up empty handed on any actual cases of someone dying from a fan in a closed room, due to heat stress or any other reason. The citations seem to be an EPA pamphlet and an NPR interview, both of which are far from saying that the fans will kill you, and neither of which are “verifiable cases”, or even anything resembling that.
I have slept under this fan for 15 years now and I keep it running almost constantly. It has yet to kill me. It is on at this very moment and I will sleep under it tonight.
I wonder why we haven't see some silly correlation like "breath death." Do you have any idea how many people die shortly after breathing for the last time?
I actually read it a really long time ago, but I just read it again. Let's review how my scenario is like that which allegedly causes fan death:
* I do not open any windows. Ever.
* My fan does not oscillate (it is a ceiling fan).
* I sleep directly under it.
* I have it on all the time.
* We face extreme heat. This is Arizona. It's well over 100 F all summer long, often closer to 110 F. That means 40+ C most of the time, for you metric users.
* The humidity is usually low, so if it kills you via evaporating all your sweat, these conditions should dry you out faster than anything else.
I have done this all summer every summer for some 15 years now. I am still alive. Heat stroke can kill you. "Fan death" will not.
The post you linked to was stupid. I did, in fact, read it, and I feel dumber for having done so. I award its author (and you) -1 point, and may God have mercy on both your souls.
More dramatically, from needing to set your convection oven 50 degrees lower, he gets that there's a 50 degree delta regardless of temperature, and: "This means that although the room’s air temperature is 90 degree Fahrenheit, with a fan on, your body is cooking at the same rate as being in a room with 140 degree Fahrenheit[.]" Of course that is inane - ignoring evaporation, blowing air over an object means the object will more quickly approach the temperature of the air (and vice-versa). Blowing 90 degree air over a 98.6 degree body is cooling the body, and cooling it faster than static 90 degree air, even if there is no sweat.
I have no doubt that there is a point at which moving air as opposed to static would cause hyperthermia faster, but it quite obviously needs the air temperature to be above body temperature and actually even above the temperature the body needs to reach for hyperthermia to become an issue. It probably needs to be even higher than that, because of sweat, but I don't have an easy way of working out how much higher. At these temperatures, we would likely be seeing deaths from heat stroke without a fan amongst the susceptible population.
None of this disproves fan death, but that article is not at all credible proof.
Well, true in the sense of the way most koreans talk about it is not the case.
Fan death is true in as much as if you blow air hotter than 37 degrees over a dehydrated body that (for whatever reason) can't wake up, you could potentially have trouble. Then again, I don't think it's particularly controversial that blowing hot air over someone who can't wake up might cause them damage. That's not the same as saying that the Korean idea of fan death is true.
