Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Cohiba]

OK, here is a newspaper article featuring Dr. Dong:

In an e-mail interview with the IHT-JoongAng Daily, Dr. Yeon Dong-su, dean of Kwandong University's medical school, who has investigated some cases of "fan deaths," refuted some of the wilder theories but insisted fan deaths do occur.
"Many people say that these victims die from lack of oxygen, but that is not true," Dr. Yeon wrote. "Hypothermia does not only occur in the winter when it is cold. The symptoms can also take place if a person has been drinking and turns on a fan in a closed room. Most people wake up when they feel cold, but if you are drunk you will not wake up, even if your body temperature drops below 35 degrees Celsius (95 F), at which point you can die from hypothermia.
"It doesn't matter so much about the temperature of the room," he continued. "If it is completely sealed, then in the current of an electric fan, the temperature can drop low enough to cause a person to die of hypothermia."

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/200409/22/200409222123324579900091009101.html

See also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
http://www.fandeath.net/
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a970912.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death
http://www.answers.com/topic/fan-death

[Grotto]

lol
How does air circulating around a room lower the room temperature?

It doesnt.

A room with a temperature of 30 degrees will maintain that 30 degrees with a fan on or not. There is a slight(emphasis on slight) cooling factor with a fan due to the evaporation process on your skin.

Stating that a fan will lower the room temperature is stupid, ludicrous and just plain wrong.

Cohiba...posting stupidity by stupid people does not make a fallicy fact.

[funplanet]

a drop in body temperature of 1-3 degrees WILL NOT CAUSE DEATH!

STOP THE FAN DEATH NONSENSE!!!!

[Grotto]

Gord Giesbrecht, a physical education professor at the University of Manitoba in Canada, is a leading expert on hypothermia.
��It's hard to imagine [death by fan], because to die of hypothermia, [one's body temperature] would have to get down to 28, drop by 10 degrees 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 10 degrees."

Dr. John Linton at Yonsei's Severance Hospital, who attended medical school at Yonsei University, is the only non-Korean licensed to practice medicine in South Korea.
"There are several things that could be causing the fan deaths, things like pulmonary embolisms, cerebrovascular accidents or arrhythmia. There is little scientific evidence to support that a fan alone can kill you if are using it in a sealed room. Although it is a common belief among Koreans, there are other explainable reasons for why these deaths are happening."

Dr. Lee Yoon-song is a professor at Seoul National University's medical school and works with the school's Institute of Scientific Investigation. He has conducted autopsies on some of the people who have been described in Korean media as having succumbed to fan death.
"When someone's body temperature drops below 35 degrees, they do start to lose judgment ability. So if someone was hiking and later found dead, that could be part of the reason. But we can't really apply this to fan accidents. I found most of the victims already had some sort of disease like heart problems or serious alcoholism. So hypothermia is not the main reason for death, but it may contribute."

Dr. Lee Yoon-song blamed the Korean media for the persistence of the urban legend.
"Korean reporters are constantly writing inaccurate articles about death by fan, describing these deaths as being caused by the fan. That's why it seems that fan deaths only happen in Korea, when in reality these types of deaths are quite rare. They should have reported the victim's original defects such as heart or lung disease, which are the main cause of death [in these cases]. If a Western doctor investigated these deaths, he would say what really caused the death, and say that a fan was beside the victim."

[cubanlord]

THANK YOU GROTTO! We tell cohiba to post a credible source from outside of this country and what does he do......POSTS UP A SOURCE FROM WITHIN THIS COUNTRY....WHERE THE FAN DEATH STORY ORIGINATED.

AS I STATED BEFORE, show me credible evidence from an outside propective.

hahahaha...now we KNOW COHIBA IS FULL OF IT......DR. DONG....pardon the pun in all of this.

[animalbirdfish]

[mindmetoo]

[yemanja]

Before AirCon season, I slept with the fan on.
I remember waking up surprisingly cold a few times.

I didn't die though

[AdamH]

[Imbroglio]

It's not the fan, it's the air in Korea. The air contains tiny particles that are invisible to the human eye, and it is this dust combined with the the flow of the air at certian temperatures that causes these mysterious deaths only in Korea. Didn't you guys know that??

[yemanja]

[itaewonguy]

[mishlert]

[the eye]

we laugh at the stupidity of fan death, but how many of you were taught never to go swimming after eating a meal?


i watched a 20/20 show and they tried to get a test group of 30 people (varied ages) to do just that. each one of them flatly refused even after a medical doctor told them it was just a myth.

they all thought they would get cramps and sink to the bottom.......

[mishlert]