Neck fans make you feel cooler, but not actually cooler : NPR

Jeffrey Pagulong and his son Christof stand in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, on July 29. Pagulong, who visits Boston, said that his neck fan “helps a lot” at high temperature. That makes noise, he said, but the noise is better than the heat.

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At the end of the morning in July, the sun is already toast the National Mall in Washington, the air is so humid, even a loose shirt quickly turns into a sticky disorder.

Later, the heat index will amount to around 103 degrees, transforming walking between air -conditioned museums into a hot trek. I am on my bike, in the hottest part of the summer tourist season, on mission: to find visitors who are trying to beat the heat with a strange gadget that has gained popularity in recent years. It doesn’t take long.

“These are incredible,” explains Christa Seger, who sits with three of her children in the shade near the Washington monument.

It holds a cooling neck fan. It looks like a spatial horse iron, but resting on your neck, it uses dozens of vents to blow the air towards your ears and head. Some models – like Seger – also have metal panels to help dissipate heat.

“I can’t believe how cold they are,” said Seger, who visits Denver.

Christa Seger holds one of the two portable neck fans she has with her by a hot morning in Washington, DC on Tuesday. Seger visits the National Mall of Denver with his family.

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Seger bought two fans for about $ 25 each a few days ago, back in Colorado.

“They last somewhere between 4 and 6 hours in full charge,” she said. Think that fans could help her daughter while spending Smithsonian museums with historic buildings – and the occasional ice cream truck – she brought a battery to keep fans in court.

“She loved it yesterday. It really helped her,” said Seger.

Some of these fans can cost hundreds of dollars. But I try a very basic model today. As he lights up, Air begins to pass in front of my ears and my neck. It looks like a nice breeze. But is it really to do something to cool me?

How do neck fans work

Consider the main strategy that our body uses to cool: perspiration.

“The heat of vaporization is taken from this sweat in the atmosphere,” said Dr. Adam Watkins of the University of Arkansas for the medical sciences of Little Rock. “So you lose warmth in this way.”

But it is not always enough. Watkins says that the emergency room where he works is 25% more heat exposure this summer than last year – a trend which, according to him, has increased in the last decade.

Intense heat waves are one of the reasons why people could turn to a personal cooling fan. But there are limits to the way they can work.

Visitors to the National Mall in Washington, DC, arrived early in the morning, a day when temperatures would amount to more than 90 degrees – and a heat index of 103.

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“The most important thing is to be able to evaporate the perspiration of your body,” explains Cecilia Kaufman, director of work safety at Korey Strunger Institute of the University of Connecticut.

In theory, a fan can stimulate your body’s evaporation cooling process by accelerating air flow on your skin.

“The problem is when it is hot and humid, sweat does not evaporate as quickly from your skin,” says Kaufman. “So that removes your body’s ability to really cool.”

The surface is the key to effective cooling

For evaporation to work well, it helps expose a lot of skin.

“The best way to cool off would be essentially to remove all your clothes, expose the whole body to the air and let all the sweat evaporate,” explains Chris Tyler, a researcher in environmental physiology at the University of Roehampton in London. “But you would be stopped,” he said, laughing, “so it’s not a recommendation.”

Bella Cabassa, 8 years old, and her brother Shaun, 10, use paper parasols to block the sun – and faune – in Washington, DC, Tuesday. The Cabassa family visited the capital from the Pennsylvania.

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On the other hand, a neck fan can only affect a small part of your body. It can be pleasant to use one, even if it blows moist air. This is partly because there are many thermal receivers on the face and neck, making them very sensitive to heat.

In general, we should not consider these neck fans as a type of treatment, says Tyler.

“It’s a bit like playing sports with an analgesic injection,” he says. “The problem is still there. It’s just that you can’t detect it a little.”

Consequently, Tyler and Kaufman say that small fans are probably more to make us feel fresher rather than reducing our body temperature – which could increase the risk that someone exaggerated without realizing how heat affects them.

But they also note that research is underway in the improvement of ways to cool the head and neck, as well as the use of cooling clothes such as hats and guaiders of the neck in hot environments.

Take a fan of the neck for a test whirlwind

At the National Mall, I am a little skeptical when I put my first Fan on. After all, the midday air is motionless and burning. The flags ringing the base of the Washington monument have fallen and apoglides. (I feel you, flags.)

But as it starts to blow out the air on my ears and my head, this little doodad seems to make my time rolling and walking a little more bearable. I am aware that I could look like a supplement of a small budget science fiction film with this thick plastic device loop around my neck. But it does not seem too heavy or obstructive. And even if I have no long hair (or let’s be real, a lot of hair of any type), it should be noted that many fans are without lamp, so they are less likely to be entangled.

Marnisha Mintlow, visit to Los Angeles, carries a portable fan on Tuesday outside the National Museum of African-American History and Culture. “It’s too hot!” Said Mintlow. “With the growing heat, the neck fan keeps me cool and my hands free.”

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I pass in front of the reflective pool at Lincoln Memorial. Along the way, I notice that when the neck fan is set in maximum power, the engine sound can be a distraction. At the bottom of the commemorative steps, I meet Jeffrey Pagulong, who visits Boston. He and his son Christof, 12, both wear fans of the neck.

“It’s really hot,” said Pagulong, standing under the flamboyant sun. “And wearing this kind of fan helps a lot, it cools with your head, so it helps” to facilitate the heat of walking, he adds.

I ask if the sound bothers him.

“The noise is ok. You can hear the fan, but that’s good. The noise is much better than the heat, you know? I can take the noise, but not the heat.”

Galileo Maldonado, 16, is holding a paper parasol on Tuesday in Washington, DC. Maldonado said that she thought that DC’s summer heat was warmer than Texas, where she came from.

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In my informal survey on the shopping center, I identify more people using old -fashioned parasols than fans of new focused. It turns out that a street seller is doing fast business, selling yellow and red umbrellas for $ 10. A customer was Galilee Maldonado, 16, visit to Texas.

“I bought it yesterday from a lady, but I really liked it,” she said.

Like a neck fan, the parasol might not do much to lower its basic temperature. But that makes Maldonado, who says that she was surprised by the warmth of Washington, felt better.

“It helps me to face this time,” she said.