How does this happen?

[padren]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

 

Fan death is a South Korean urban legend which states that an electric fan, if left running overnight in a closed room, can cause the death of those inside (by suffocation, poisoning, or hypothermia). Fans manufactured and sold in Korea are equipped with a timer switch that turns them off after a set number of minutes, which users are frequently urged to set when going to sleep with a fan on.[1]

 

The heat wave which has encompassed Korea for about a week, has generated various heat-related accidents and deaths. At least 10 people died from the effects of electric fans which can remove oxygen from the air and lower body temperatures...

 

On Friday in eastern Seoul, a 16-year-old girl died from suffocation after she fell asleep in her room with an electric fan in motion. The death toll from fan-related incidents reached 10 during the past week. Medical experts say that this type of death occurs when one is exposed to electric fan breezes for long hours in a sealed area. "Excessive exposure to such a condition lowers one's temperature and hampers blood circulation. And it eventually leads to the paralysis of heart and lungs," says a medical expert.

 

"To prevent such an accident, one should keep the windows open and not expose oneself directly to fan air," he advised.

 

Fan death is frequently cited when police detectives are unable to determine cause of death.

"

 

Fan death... is this a joke or a serious article?

[insane_alien]

its an urban legend.

 

but that doesn't stop many many people believing in it

[swansont]

Yeah. People probably die with no visually obvious cause all the time, and the survivors like to know why. This is an easy explanation. While there are some elements of fact in the purported explanations, there is the massive question of why this is localized to South Korea. And the simplest explanation is the cultural one — the attribution of many unexplained deaths to this cause, perpetuating the urban legend.

[padren]

But the The Korea Consumer Protection Board actually issued an alert - and "Fan Death" is cited as a cause of death by detectives during investigations. I understand culturally people often ascribe to various urban legends, no less here than anywhere else, but for publicly funded agencies to support an urban legend that is based on something that is so logically flawed is what I find baffling.

 

This is a country with a space program, I wonder if they've carefully considered the use of fans to break the laws of conservation of energy - it may lead to some innovative future designs.

[Mr Skeptic]

I'm not a fan of urban legends.