Fan Death TT

In ever culture there are myths and urban legends. In Korea, a major ongoing story is Fan Death. It is said that should one leave an electrical fan running over night with all windows closed, those inside the room could potentially perish due to suffocation or hypothermia. There is much debate surrounding this myth as many are convinced that it is real while others staunchly state that it is impossible.

Today, you'll hear the facts and you can make up your minds for yourselves!

There are many theories regarding this topic. A few of the many include :
~ The Korean government imposing this idea to reduce the waste of energy.
~ The circular motion of the fan blades can create a vacuum in which all the room's occupants' air will be taken from them because of this vacuum. The life is literally sucked out of them.
~ The fan blades cut up all of the oxygen molecules making them unusable to the beings that need them and therefore, those in the room will suffer from oxygen, or suffocation.

A Korean government organization also at one time supported this belief by making an official statement saying that fan death was one of the top 5 reasons for injury or accidents in the summer.

Many experts in the medical field deny this idea and claim that it is only folklore. Some also go as far as to blame the Korean government for propagating this ridiculous notion. In an excerpt from the Korean Joongang Daily newspaper, Pr Gord Giesbrecht states :

"It's hard to imagine death by fan, because to die of hypothermia, one's body temperature would have to get down to 28 [°C], drop by 10 degrees [Celsius] overnight. We've got people lying in snowbanks overnight here in Winnipeg and they survive. Maybe if someone was elderly and they were sitting there for three days in a sealed room with an electric fan turned on. Someone is not going to die from hypothermia because their body temperature drops two or three degrees overnight; it would have to drop eight to ten degrees." In addition, "the only way to verify whether someone had really died of hypothermia during the night would be to take a core body temperature the following morning. Waiting three days while the body was in the morgue wouldn't work because the corpse's temperature can drop during that time."

However, the writers for the well-known blog Ask a Korean! asserts that some professional medical opinions may be mistaken. They admit that it is rare, but not completely unheard of. They say that if in a completely enclosed room with no air flowing in to replenish your body and only air in mass quantities is being pushed on to your body, you risk catching hyperthermia. They compare it to the operation of a turbo-overn, but in the opposite sense. (Cool air instead of hot air.)

With all these contradictory assertions being made, how can we know whether fan death is real or not? I suppose there is no real way to find out unless you feel like putting the fan on high and sealing off your room. Are you willing to take the risk in order to prove this supposed urban legend false?

*Note : HandS Korea has chosen to take a neutral stance on this one! ^^