As both an engineer and a homemaker, I find men’s ignorance of common household appliances utterly astonishing! Perhaps this is what has fueled so many of the urban legends about vacuum cleaners and the penis.
First, with regard to the degree of suction, it was obvious to me that vacuum cleaners should have far less than any penis pump device. However, this morning I took three minutes to actually measure two vacuum cleaners with a vacuum gauge. My findings are:
Large Sears Shop Vacuum: 12 kPa (kilopascals)
Powerful Panasonic Canister Vacuum: 14 kPa
Such descriptions of pumping that I have seen which actually recommend specific vacuum levels (some pumps have a gauge) suggest levels in the range of 20 to 50 kPa.
It would appear that a typical vacuum cleaner indeed produces less vacuum than a penis pumping device, as I suspected. This tells us two things. First, the vacuum cleaner will not injure the penis through suction any more than the penis pump device will. Second, the vacuum cleaner probably will be ineffective at achieving the results obtained with a penis pump device (if there actually are any).
The second thing that amuses me is the description of the vacuum cleaner's "fan,"which comes straight out of urban legend. As any housewife knows, the "fan" in a standard canister vacuum cleaner (the type with a hose; i.e. not an upright) is not right behind the hose opening. In fact, it is located behind the dirt collection bag, so that it sucks air and dirt through the bag. It would require a very long penis, capable of bashing its way through the bag, filter, and usually a metal mesh, before reaching the "fan." In shop vacuums, the "fan" is located inside the filter, and at significant distance from the hose connection, and pointed away from the hose connection. Further, such machines generally have a baffle between the hose connection and the fan-filter assembly, designed to force dirt to swirl and circulate in the tank before reaching the filter, to avoid premature clogging of the filter. It is also worth noting that the suction "fan" in a vacuum cleaner (properly called a centrifugal blower) does not look anything like the fan you may have sitting on your desk, and does not have blades remotely like a conventional fan. In fact, the central portion of the blower disk, which is exposed in the blower unit's suction opening, is generally smooth, without blades at all. As such, the stories of penis mutilations by vacuum cleaner fans appear to be pure myths, and are indeed described as such by organizations which research urban legends.
However, there are some real stories of penis mutilation by vacuum cleaners. These appear to have resulted in cases where the rotating brushes found in a "power head," upright machine, or hand-held machine were used to stimulate the glans of the penis. In these cases, the brushes pulled in the penis (as they are designed to do with dirt), and mutilated it. | 
