Letter to the editor regarding Hospers et al. (2020): Electric fans: A potential stay-at-home cooling strategy during the COVID-19 pandemic this summer?

摘要

In Hospers and colleagues' recent article (Hospers et al., 2020), electric fans have been proposed as a potential stay-at-home cooling strategy during the C0V1D-19 pandemic under heat wave conditions. Besides, the authors defined the threshold temperatures for electric fan-use so that the public could use this as a guideline. In this letter, 1 would like to challenge the rigorousness of the methodology used in their work to determine threshold temperature and relative humidity (RH) zone for electric fan-use during heatwave temperatures. Hospers et al. (2020) used a standard conceptual human heat balance model to analyze the heat transfer between the body and ambient environments with and without an electric fan. If the convective heat load with fan-use exceeded the maximum evaporative cooling potential (which was calculated from the maximum sweat production of an individual person), electric fan-use under the specific is not advisable. The above methodology seems flawed because in some recommended climatic conditions which fan-use is advisable, fanning could accelerate human sweating and thereby hasten dehydration. Hence, it's debatable to include those conditions for fan-use.