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Putting a full size refrigerator in a small bedroom, any health risk?

agkm800

agkm800

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 18, 2009
672
4
I am thinking about putting a full size refrigerator in my room for my own use. But, I am a bit worried about any health risk it may cause. The refrigerator is pretty new... bought it less than 3 years ago.

Is it a bad idea? Or, is it just same as putting a big screen TV in a small room?
 
Err...I think a full sized refrigerator is a bit OD. I use a mini fridge for my dorm room, and it's more than enough.

One concern you might have is the amount of electricity it saps up, that is, if you're paying your own bills.

Another thing you'd risk is just overeating all the time, cause it's so readily accessible.





Or maybe the snow ninjas will come in the stealth of the night. :eek:
 
Just put all your food items on top of your AC. I do that all the time when I'm eating cereal late at night and get tired. I just put the bowl on the AC and when I wake up it tastes just as good!
 
Unspoken Demise said:
Yeah, then report back on how your food poisoning is progressing.
Click to expand...

Now that's a good way to lose weight. :p Much better than diet pills. :D

My friend actually lost 20 pounds in a month because he ate some really old chicken and didn't realize he had food poisoning. He was medicated for such a long time because of it.
 
spaceboots06 said:
Now that's a good way to lose weight. :p Much better than diet pills. :D

My friend actually lost 20 pounds in a month because he ate some really old chicken and didn't realize he had food poisoning. He was medicated for such a long time because of it.
Click to expand...

Haha we should market it:
Billy Mayes here for 'Can 'o Stomach Vir.........too soon?
 
A refrigerator is a heat exchanger. Heat from the inside is exchanged to the outside. And, as it is an inefficient system, more heat is produced on the outside. So yes, the room will be warmer. But no - no toxic fumes of electromagnetic fields will grow a brain tumor or shrink your testicles.

However, moving the monster may hurt your back.

Don't get fat!
 
Unspoken Demise said:
It could fall on you in the middle of the night.
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Considering that people are actually killed by soft drink vending machines, this is not surprising.

Reportedly 2 people die every year from altercations with a vending machine

An article in the Journal of the American Medical Association documents how way back in 1988, 15 cases in which men tried to get a can of drink out of the machine were crushed. 3 died, the other 12 required hospitalization for injuries such as fractures of the skull, toe, ankle, tibia, femur, and pelvis; inter-cerebral bleeding, knee contusion, and one punctured bladder.

As a result now, vending machines often display a warning label such as "Warning! Vending machine design prevents dispensing free products or coins. NEVER ROCK OR TILT: Machine can fall over causing serious injury or death" as used by the Coca Cola company.

Roll on natural selection!
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LOL with all the extra food you can store in a full sized fridge and eat coupled with the fact that you will be walking less to and from the kitchen since its in your room.... the only risk I see is obesity
 
I've slept with a fridge under my bed for the past three years in college. Not full size, but also not harmful.

You shouldn't have any problem unless you're taking Lunesta, "There have been reports of "sleep-driving," "sleep-eating," or other unusual behaviors in people taking sedative-hypnotic medications. In general, people do not remember doing these things when they wake up in the morning. These activities can be dangerous, since people are not fully awake or alert." ! :p :eek:
 
Reading the thread title, I thought that golf had gone more extreme than I remembered.

Health risks indeed.
 
All the jokes aside, I am glad to confirm that it is okay.

When I was very little, about 25 years ago, I remember hearing my dad's engineer friend saying something like we shouldn't put a refrigerator in a small bedroom because it can be a health risk. Obviously, not because of over eating or the junk food.
 
Unless you plan to put a LOT of food in it, it will be largely empty and that will cause it to run inefficiently.

And if you do have a LOT of food, then you're racing to eat what you can before it gets spoiled. That's the most annoying thing I've found about living by myself.
 
agkm800 said:
All the jokes aside, I am glad to confirm that it is okay.

When I was very little, about 25 years ago, I remember hearing my dad's engineer friend saying something like we shouldn't put a refrigerator in a small bedroom because it can be a health risk. Obviously, not because of over eating or the junk food.
Click to expand...

Maybe if it had a sudden and severe freon leak quickly displacing the Oxygen in your room while you were asleep suffocating you, freon has very low toxicity. If the room is sealed an old refrigerator may have enough gas for a lethal dose. The lethal dosages occurring at over 100,000 PPM for short periods of time (Emergency 106-107).

From what I have read of HFC-134a (used in modern refrigerators) it has even lower toxicity then freon. According to the Nation Research Council in rats the lethal dosage by inhalition is 567,000 PPM for four hours of exposure or 750,000 PPM for 30 minutes (Toxicity 25). The NOAEL being 50,000 PPM (Toxicity 33).

These studies were conducted for submarines given the sealed environment. The only reference I could find to a even a freon related death are suffocation from industrial or submarine accidents. That or intentionally huffing freon at high concentration from plastic bags. I could not find any deaths related to HFC-134a.

References:

United States. National Research Council. Committee on Toxicology. Toxicity of Alternatives to Chlorofluorocarbons: HFC-134a and HCFC-123. Washington D.C., National Academy Press, 1996

United States. National Research Council. Emergency and Continuous Exposure Guidance Levels for Selected Submarine Contaminates: Volume 2. Washington D.C., National Academy Press, 2008
 
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