Fans ‘Cool Down’ SIDS Risk

There’s a line in a song called “Promise” by the now defunct band Eve6 that says, “Why you gotta keep the fan on high when it’s cold outside?” I’ve always found this lyric somewhat humorous because I can relate to it. Prior to my hearing the song, I thought I was something of an aberration, preferring to sleep with the fan on even though summer had long past. I’ve come to find over the years that many people prefer their sleep with “the fan on high,” as the song says.

And according to a new study in the October issue of the journal Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, new born babies prefer the fan on as well as it can potentially help avoid nightmares that always leave parents reeling.

It’s called Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, more commonly referred to by its acronym, SIDS. As the name suggests, its effects are sudden; parents are left with no indication, no answers regarding why their seemingly healthy child just stopped breathing. Not even autopsies.

Fortunately, the prevalence of SIDS has decreased dramatically since 1980. At that time, the incidence rate was as high as 1.53 deaths for every 1000 births; today, that incidence rate has dropped to .51 deaths for every 1000 births. This drop in incidence is largely due to the increased awareness of SIDS over the past 20+ years, most notably through awareness campaigns like “Back to Sleep,” which advised parents to place infants on their backs, not their stomachs, when they slept.

After analyzing data of approximately 500 infants – over 300 of them random, nearly 200 of them individually selected and whose parents were interviewed by the researchers – doctors from Kaiser’s Permanente Division of Research found several similarities among the infants that died from SIDS compared to those that did not. Among the findings, the infants that succumbed to SIDS tended to be placed on their stomachs or sides, did not use a pacifier, and slept on less-than-firm surfaces (soft cribs). But they also found something else that was particularly noteworthy: babies that slept in rooms where no fan was present were more likely to die from SIDS. According to their analysis, there was a 72 percent reduced risk of SIDS among those infants who slept with a fan on than those who slept without one. That risk was further reduced when babies slept in poorly ventilated rooms (94 percent reduced risk).

Further evidence to the fan’s effectiveness was that when babies did not sleep with a pacifier, slept on soft surfaces, slept with someone else or slept on their stomachs – all prime risk factors for SIDS – they were at a reduced risk for SIDS if the fan was on.

At the very least, fans seem to counteract risk factors for SIDS, for the use of a fan helped cancel out some of the prime risk factors associated with SIDS (sleeping in the prone position). But more than anything else, this finding indicates fans are just another proactive action parents can take to prevent the unthinkable. It’s why I’ll continue to be a fan of fans.