Changing over to daylight saving time—a major annoyance for many people—may be on its way out as lawmakers cite public health as a prime reason to ditch the twice-yearly clock-resetting ritual.
The time change, especially in the spring, has been blamed for increases in heart attacks and traffic accidents as people adjust to a temporary sleep deficit. But as legislatures across the country consider bills to end the clock shift, a big question looms ahead of this year’s March 8 change: Which is better, summer hours or standard time?
There are strong opinions on either side, it turns out, with scientists and politicians at odds.
Retailers, chambers of commerce and recreational industries have historically wanted the sunny evenings that allow more time to shop and play.
Researchers on human biological rhythms come down squarely on the side of the standard, wintertime hours referred to as “God’s time” by angry farmers who objected to daylight saving time when it was first widely adopted during World War I.
Politicians have reacted accordingly. More than 200 state bills have been filed since 2015 to either keep summer hours or go to permanent standard time, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
But none of those efforts can become a reality without the blessing of Congress. States have always been able to opt-out of summer hours and adopt standard time permanently, as Arizona and Hawaii have done. But making daylight saving time year-round is another story.
Seeking to End ‘Spring Ahead, Fall Back’ Cycle
Yates, 54, a tech startup CEO based in Denver, has been promoting an end to clock switching for six years. He doesn’t pick a side. It’s the switching itself that he wants to end. At first, it was just about the grogginess and annoyance of being off schedule, he said. But then he began to see scientific studies that showed the changes were doing actual harm.A German study of autopsies from 2006 to 2015, for instance, showed a significant uptick just after the spring switch in deaths caused by cardiac disease, traffic accidents, and suicides. Researchers have also noted a significant increased risk for heart attacks and strokes.
Three measures pending in Congress would allow states to make daylight saving time permanent. But, in the meantime, state lawmakers who want the extra evening sunlight are preparing resolutions and bills, some of which would be triggered by congressional approval and the adoption of daylight time in surrounding states.
“The human clock was not built to jump back and forth. That’s why we get jet lag,” said Ward, who was a co-presenter with Yates at the NCSL summit. “It is very easy to show that if you knock people off an hour of sleep there’s a bump temporarily in bad things that will happen.”
Science Backs Sticking With Standard Time
All of this alarms scientists who study human biological rhythms.Messing with the body’s relationship to the sun can negatively affect not only sleep but also cardiac function, weight, and cancer risk, the society’s members wrote. According to one often-quoted study on different health outcomes within the same time zones, each 20 minutes of later sunrise corresponded to an increase in certain cancers by 4 percent to 12 percent.
“Essentially it’s like science denial,” he said. “It’s bizarre to me that politicians are not hearing the experts on this.”
Pea, 41 and an amateur astronomer, understands the human need to have the sun directly overhead at noon. “It’s a wonderful connection to natural reality that unfortunately is lost on many people,” he said. Daylight saving time “distances us from the natural world.”
At the very least, lawmakers ought to consider history, he said. Daylight saving time was originally a plan to save energy during the two world wars but wasn’t popular enough to be uniformly embraced after the conflicts were over. In 1974, the federal government decided to make it temporarily year-round as a way to deal with the energy crisis (although energy savings were later found to be underwhelming).
Its popularity fell off a cliff after the first winter, when people discovered the sun didn’t rise until 8 a.m. or later and parents worried for the safety of kids waiting in the dark for school buses.
Pea finds it frustrating that the momentum now is for permanent summer hours—a fact he attributes to the emotional attachment with summer. “It’s a shame that every generation we have to revisit this issue,” he said.
The AP-NORC poll found 40 percent of its respondents support permanent standard time, with 31 percent opting for permanent daylight saving time.
Ward said people have gotten comfortable with daylight saving time since its duration has been lengthened to eight months by extensions in 1986 and 2007. (Before 1986, daylight saving time lasted six months.)
“So now really most of the year we are on the summer schedule, and people are used to that and they like it,” he said. “That makes them more aggrieved when we change back to the winter schedule.”
In any case, changing the clocks is a rare issue in that it isn’t partisan, Ward said. “If the government can’t respond to people when they want something and it’s not even a partisan issue, that’s just a sad commentary,” he said. “Can’t we please fix something that doesn’t make sense anymore?”
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