I have done it but am not possitive exactly how. I could probably do some tests to make sure but I think if you go to another page and click the back button it may stop.
another thing is it may be looking at the time from when the first page loaded. example
page first loads at 8 time. if you view the source of the page it has a meta tag = refresh at 300 which should be 300 seconds. next within the 300 seconds try going to the next page. then after a total of over 300 seconds from the first page load hit the back button. I think the meta refresh looks at the first page load time and compares the current time to that. since you were on a different page and passed the 300 seconds it will no longer work.
Lorddog