Killer electric fans - Is falling asleep next to an electric fan a potentially fatal mistake?

Maclean's ^ | August 19, 2015 | Meagan Campbell

[chopperman]

In ‘Nam, the barracks were not air conditioned. I worked a night shift and had to sleep during the day. To be able to sleep, I placed a window fan at the foot of my bed blasting on me. I guess I’m lucky I survived.

[Nervous Tick]

>> Rose Kang describes that whenever a ceiling fan starts to spin, she vomits.

Interesting.

Earlier in my depraved life I occasionally had the same problem, but with furniture.

Whenever the bed would start to spin, I’d vomit soon after.

Usually happened late at night after parties.

[P.O.E.]

[Flick Lives]

The WMD of fans

[ThunderSleeps]

So these guys are blaming fans for deaths and offer up several examples. Gee, you don't think maybe the one guy died of alcohol poisoning and there just happened to be a fan there? Or that people who died of dehydration in heat waves did that because the heat wave dehydrated them and they happened to be using a fan to try to cool down?

The notion that closing a room and using AC could cause suffocation is silly. Do the math. Google volume of air per day - about 11,000 liters. Now convert that to cubic feet, about 388. Now realize that even a modest sized bedroom is say 10x10 ft with 7 ft ceilings. That's 700 cubic feet. Yes, subtract a little for furniture etc. You still have more than enough air in the room for an entire day, not just sleeping overnight. Also, the air you breath in is roughly 20% oxygen. The air you exhale back out is roughly 15%. You only get about 1/4 of the oxygen out of the air. (this is part of why CPR and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation works)

[KirbDog]

While I consider the whole article to be a huge load what really got me was when they said this(followed by sunburns among children left inside cars). I mean really they died from sunburn after being left inside of a car. Hmmm I don't think sunburn was the cause.

[I want the USA back]

Somebody escaped from the loony bin.

[Fai Mao]

“>> My wife needs to sleep in a freezer

Your wife and mine must be cousins. I’ll bet I’ve met you at a family reunion. :-)”

Actually I had a fan once but she stopped clapping and I sent her home

[Smokin' Joe]

Something that has always cracked me up while working in the North Dakota Oil Patch. In the command center, the Texans would have the AC going until it was 60 inside in the summertime--any warmer, and they'd complain about the heat.

In the winter (temps zero and below outside) they'd have the heat set on 80--anything less was too cold.

[rarestia]

Must be a lot of fun at parties.

Hold ma beer, watch this?

[bigbob]

Same people who get headaches from power lines and hear AM radio via their fillings.

[blueheron2]

I’m more worried about cheap Chinese electrical wiring in my ceiling fans. Many people I know let their ceiling fans run all the time. I’ve heard there are many fires caused by ceiling fans but have never seen any evidence of it.

[Smokin' Joe]

Actually I had a fan once but she stopped clapping and I sent her home

Just as well. You probably didn't need the claps...

[Nervous Tick]

lol

[thackney]

In South Korea, newspapers and a government agency report that the air blowing from an electric fan can cause death. “If you fall asleep with it going, you’ll die the next day,

Wow, I must be immortal. I've fallen asleep with the fan a few feet away and blowing directly on me for decades.

[SES1066]

On a par with the valid statistic that tomatoes are fatal, as most people who die have eaten tomatoes or tomato products shortly before death. Statistics are powerful tools but as the saying goes, you can prove almost anything with stats.

[clearcarbon]

Fan death.

[BitWielder1]

There couldn't be any other cause of death could there?
We better pay a bunch of white coated guys to say "Yeah, fans are bad for you." and then the science will be settled.

[Patriot Babe]

Wow I thought I was the only one. I have my fan on in my bedroom on 24hr a day. The reason my bedroom is located in the back and not enough circulation runs thru there even with the windows open. The fan helps especially when one is going thru hot flashes. =)

[wideawake]

And this is one of the best-educated, most technologically savvy countries in the world.

Bizarre.