Can ironing kill you?

January 27, 2006 10:21 AM

Can using an electric iron for a long period of time and then washing your hands with cold water (or opening a refrigerator and standing in front of it) kill you? I know this question sounds whacky... more inside->

Okay, so I work with several Dominicans and they are trying to tell me and an another American co-worker that in their country, there have been cases in which individuals who irons all day long, for hours on end, have died as a result of washing their hands immediately after ironing. These co-workers are completely serious and are actually offended that me and my other co-worker don't believe them. I have tested them to see if they are just pulling my leg and they are not. They are completely serious.

I mean, its totally ridiculus, I know... but if any one has ever heard of this "Dominican Legend" please let me know and please provide links.

Thanks....

posted by Gankmore to Science & Nature (16 answers total)

Fan death
posted by hortense at 10:28 AM on January 27, 2006

I don't know the answer to this, but fan death seems a bit different - how might ironing and washing your hands deprive you of oxygen?
posted by drobot at 10:34 AM on January 27, 2006

Impossible, unless they are not conveying the entire story.
posted by geoff. at 10:35 AM on January 27, 2006

drobot, you could have gotten hortense's point from the first six words alone:
Fan death is an urban legend

Some other key quotes:

The legend is remarkably resilient, and is accepted even by many Korean medical professionals. In summer, mainstream Korean news sources regularly report on cases of fan death, even if more likely causes (e.g. heart attack, gunshot, alcohol poisoning) are evident.

When informed that the phenomenon is virtually unheard of outside of their country, some Koreans have gone as far as suggesting that their unique physiology renders them susceptible to fan death.
posted by Aknaton at 10:51 AM on January 27, 2006

Okay. I'm hooked. Why do they think washing your hands after ironing will kill you?

I worked in a pizza parlor for several years where we used a 600 degree oven next to a very cold walkin cooler. On busy nights the pizza peel would get almost too hot to hold. Additionally, since we were serving food, hand washing was a very regular thing. And it was Montana, so in the Winter the water would be extra cold.

No one ever died, and I never heard any such warnings.

I'd say this myth is definitively busted.

This doesn't replicate holding on to something with an electrical heating element though. So the reason they think this is dangerous would be helpful. However, woman in salons hold hair driers and electric trimmers all day long, and they wash their hands. Do they die also?
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:52 AM on January 27, 2006

Sorry, maybe I wasn't clear - Gankmore asked if anybody had heard of this particular legend - I think he or she understands that it is an urban legend, but wanted to know if anybody could provide more information on it. hortense linked to an urban legend about fan death - I was just saying that this urban legend is not the 'fan death' urban legend.
posted by drobot at 11:07 AM on January 27, 2006

washing their hands while holding a plugged-in iron so that it submerges and electrocutes them

I'm betting it's that...

or have other conditions that may have caused a coincidental death?

... or this, in that something about standing in a very hot room for a very long time, following immediately by immersion in very cold water, causes some kind of stress that injures old, weak people.

Then again, the "Danish cold dip" spa treatment is exactly that, and you don't see many Danes keeling over.
posted by frogan at 11:56 AM on January 27, 2006

You woulnd't even have to submerge the iron--if it had a short, and you touched a grounded pipe, you could get a shock.

Still, though, this has all the marks of an urban legend to me. I did some googling, and didn't see anything about it, though.
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:00 PM on January 27, 2006

Response by poster: There is no leg pulling. These Dominicans are dead-serious. no pun intended... oh the irony.

My co-worker and I are having a real good laugh about it though. We also explained this phenom to our boss and he gave us crazy eyes and ran out of the building. Ha!

Thank G-d the weekend is here!
posted by Gankmore at 12:01 PM on January 27, 2006

One of the quotes from the fan death article may apply -- "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."

Perhaps some combination of having ironed all day (the steam frequently gracing the surface of the skin and warming it significantly, like an opposite of frostbite) combined with the sudden temperature change of the icy water made some sort of circulation traffic jam that played a part in the deaths, but not the direct cause.

Can you get hypothermia in just one part of you? Or perhaps the transmission of the rapidly cooled blood throughout the very warm system caused some variety of jarring reaction that cascaded a series of problems already present within the women (as age is wont to do) that merely started the reaction?
posted by vanoakenfold at 12:06 PM on January 27, 2006

Sorry, not responsive, but just wanted to say I have heard a similar theory from some Mexican co-workers (who I no longer work with so I can't easily ask them more about it). Apparently because of this belief, ironing clothes for example, would always be done after other tasks like washing dishes, mopping etc.
posted by PY at 12:53 PM on January 27, 2006

I remember hearing something similar when I was a kid. There was this crazy idea that people who ironed for a long time would somehow build up a charge and you had to be careful not to touch metal/water or the somesuch. I think the logic behind the myth has to do with static electricity.
posted by nixerman at 2:40 PM on January 27, 2006

While not by any means a Myth (I don't think anyway), you can indeed die from sudden changes in temperatures.

I've heard a story or two about boats capsizing close to shore in really cold waters. As in, cold enough you can indeed get hypothermia if you are in it too long. After swimming to shore, they immediatly got up and started walking around. The drastic change in temperature of the blood shocked the heart and caused a heart attack.

I believe it is recommended in some ocean survival guides that if you have to swim to shore in cold water, to simply crawl out and let your body lay out of the water for a few minutes to warm itself back up before you start running around.

If I have time tonight, I'll google a bit and see if I can confirm this.

However, even if it's true, I highly doubt this hot iron, cold water theory.
posted by Phynix at 2:20 AM on January 28, 2006

I've heard a similar version in Venezuela...
As a side note, I once did a lot of ironing and then washed my hands in cold water, the joints hurt like hell.
The pain vanished after about five minutes. Who knows, maybe the story stems from a similar episode.
posted by lorbus at 2:23 AM on January 28, 2006

Someone should submit this one to the Mythbusters. Not that it has any chance of being true, but it would be interesting to watch them try to concoct some kind of apparatus to prove it.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:04 PM on January 29, 2006

Can you get hypothermia in just one part of you?

Frostbite is similar to hypothermia on a small scale: as the body withdraws blood supply from the extremities, the tissues die. However, hypothermia is really the loss of heat from the core: the body is losing heat faster than it can make it, so the core temperature starts dropping. If it drops by about 5°C it's curtains.

Needless to say, unless you're sick or close to death, your body's thermo-regulation has no problem shifting from holding a clothes-iron to holding a cold beer. Jumping from an extended sauna stay to icy water may come close to delivering that kind of shock, but even that, all sorts of people do that sort of thing on a regular basis.
posted by phliar at 12:24 PM on January 31, 2006