“The rain drop that fell on you
Could have been the morning dew
You pushed it away from the rose
It came back to give you the same dose!”
There is an appliance in your house which was illegal in one form in the early 90s!
In fact it used to cause suffocation so much so the cause of suffocation was named after that appliance!
now do not lose your cool!
read on!
The scene in one of the Indiana Jones movie shows Indy getting inside a refrigerator to escape a Nuclear explosion! Apparently it was safe during a nuclear explosion! Then again it is a big if! Since very close to the explosion it may not give you much protection!
Further away though it could save you from bumps and falls to an extent! You may still end up with broken bones and some lacerations and then some! Whether you would survive or not, well no one can know for sure!
Am sure that information would come in handy!
But the refrigerator may not be the messiah of safety as Indy shows! In fact in the early days of refrigerator, it was one of the leading causes of death by suffocation! In fact the term used those days since it was so common was refrigerator death!
A refrigerator death is death by suffocation in a refrigerator or other air-tight appliance. Because, by design, such appliances are air-tight when closed, a person entrapped inside will have a low supply of oxygen!
Early refrigerators could only be opened from the outside, making accidental entrapment a possibility, particularly of children playing with discarded appliances; many such deaths have been recorded!
The issue with these refrigerators was that those refrigerator were places with a poor air supply, a heavy lid or a self-latching door.
Children playing games – such as hide and seek – may crawl inside and become trapped.
The watertight or airtight seal prevents them from getting air, and the appliance’s noise insulation prevents their screams from being heard and very soon suffocation follows
Apart from refrigerators and similar equipment such as iceboxes, freezers, and coolers, equipment such as clothes washers, dryers, and toy chests can also put children at risk of refrigerator death.
The refrigerator in our house was this mammoth appliance which used to silently hum in a corner and get special status! The house with a refrigerator those days was a gifted house since food would not get spoilt and you can get ice whenever you want!
Of course how frequent and how much ice was limited!
The freezing tray was a magical place which looked like Kashmir every time we used to open it!
The earliest refrigerators regardless of the cooling technology, had doors on the units which were sealed shut using a mechanical latch. I used to remember that refrigerators had this lock which was used only when we used to shift houses. No other time was the lock used! In fact the key was so small and delicate that many times a small knife could open the refrigerator!
Apparently after World War II when production of refrigerators resumed, old refrigerators were often disposed of. But one statistics for the 18 months from January 1954 to June 1956 showed that 54 children were known to have been trapped in household refrigerators, and that 39 of them died!
As the issue rose in prominence, people were asked not to abandon refrigerators and to detach the doors of unused refrigerators! Many places actually enacted legislation making the abandonment of a refrigerator with a latch in a location where a child might find it illegal!
At least as early as 1954, alternative methods of securing air-tight closures had been suggested and starting in the mid-1950s, volunteers and health inspectors searched out abandoned refrigerators in order to detach doors and break latches.
Around the world, manufacture of latch refrigerators has been replaced by that of ones with magnet-closing doors with a lock and key which could be locked only from outside.
The next time you open the doors of your refrigerators with ease; just put a thought on the tragic history. Talking about Technology and tragedy; it is indeed a big loss to have lost SM Krishna. He will be remembered as the one who made Bengaluru the tech hub it is today!
Heartfelt condolences…
OM shanthi
Shubh ratri!
ramadocblog 