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Tag: urban legend

  • Can These Ceiling Fans Kill You in Your Sleep?

    Many folks have ceiling fans in their homes. They are great for circulating air in both summer and winter months. But did you know that millions of people believe that ceiling fans can kill you?

    The belief, which is widely held in South Korea, is called “fan death”. It technically applies to any electric fan, including ceiling fans, that are in the room with a sleeping person. The belief has no basis in science, but that does not stop people from coming up with pseudo-scientific ideas about what may “cause” it.

    The urban legends about fan death are as old as the technology itself. When electric fans were first introduced to Korea, stories of asphyxiation and facial paralysis in sleeping people started circulating.

    Some say that hypothermia is the culprit, that the fan lowers the room temperature too much. But fans do not lower room temperature. They comply circulate the air that is there. The cooling effect you feel is due to the fan blowing away your own radiant body heat, which only lowers the body temp a couple of degrees.

    This is why ceiling fans have no benefit unless a person is in the room where one is blowing. Engineers commonly tell homeowners looking for energy savings to turn off ceiling fans when no one is in the room. They are doing nothing but wasting energy.

    Scientific argument does not stop people from repeating these stories. Even the media runs with them every summer in South Korea, such as this story in the Korea Herald in 2011.

    A man reportedly died on Monday morning after sleeping with an electric fan running. The 59 years-old victim, only known by his surname Min, was found dead with the fan fixed directly at him.

    The South Korean government even warns about fan death as a “summer hazard”. It lists “asphyxiation from electric fans and air conditioners” as among the Top Five causes of death in summer.

    Some say that the belief was intentionally started by the South Korean government decades ago as a way to get people to conserve energy by turning off their electric fans at night.

    Researchers have spoken out against the myth, insisting that 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.” They say that these deaths that have been attributed to fans were likely caused by some other undiagnosed or unfound condition, but the forensics investigators on the scene saw a fan and jumped to an erroneous conclusion.

    Dr. Lee Yoon-song, a professor at Seoul National University’s medical school, says there is a reason these “fan deaths” seem to happen a lot in Korea. It is the media.

    “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.”

    Here is an actual Korean news report that attributed a death to leaving a fan on the sleeper.

    Image via YouTube

  • Facebook Viral Legend Circulates

    Facebook Viral Legend Circulates

    Recently, a story began circulating on Facebook about an incident on a Brazilian airline. The story, accompanied by a nondescript picture of an airline stewardess, soon went viral. Here is the text of the story:

    This happened on TAM airlines.
    A 50-something year old white woman arrived at her seat and saw that the passenger next to her was a black man.
    Visibly furious, she called the air hostess.
    “What’s the problem, ma?” the hostess asked her
    “Can’t you see?” the lady said – “I was given a seat next to a black man. I can’t seat here next to him. You have to change my seat”
    – “Please, calm down, ma” – said the hostess
    “Unfortunately, all the seats are occupied, but I’m still going to check if we have any.”
    The hostess left and returned some minutes later.
    “Madam, as I told you, there isn’t any empty seat in this class- economy class.
    But I spoke to the captain and he confirmed that there isn’t any empty seats in the economy class. We only have seats in the first class.”
    And before the woman said anything, the hostess continued
    “Look, it is unusual for our company to allow a passenger from the economy class change to the first class.
    However, given the circumstances, the commandant thinks that it would be a scandal to make a passenger travel sat next to an unpleasant person.”
    And turning to the black man, the hostess said:
    “Which means, Sir, if you would be so nice to pack your handbag, we have reserved you a seat in the first class…”
    And all the passengers nearby, who were shocked to see the scene started applauding, some standing on their feet.”
    SHARE IF YOU ARE AGAINST RACISM!

    These kinds of stories evoke a strong emotional reaction from many of us, and we want so badly to share them. But, is this story true?

    A quick Snopes search reveals that this story has been around, in several different forms, since 1998.

    From the Snopes entry:

    “At different times the stories are circulated anew with their details altered. For instance, the story we recorded in 1998 about the racist woman on the British Airways flights out of Johannesburg came back for another round in 2004, that time purporting to be about a white woman on a flight between Saskatoon and Calgary. In 2005 it was told of a well-to-do woman seated next to a yarmulka-wearing Jew on a flight out of Atlanta. In January 2012 the story was spread via Facebook, that time about a “50-something year old white woman” traveling on TAM Airlines (a Brazilian air carrier).”