By: John Michael Pierobon
Daylight savings time (DST) is a yearly affliction imposed by the government that needs to end for several reasons besides public health and safety. It is unpopular, and it does not save energy.
An early goal of DST was to reduce evening usage of incandescent lighting, once a primary use of electricity. Although energy conservation remains an important goal, energy usage patterns have greatly changed since then. The federal government has phased out production of incandescent light bulbs.
DST may have saved energy 50 years ago, but the opposite is true today. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara conducted a study after Indiana adopted DST in 2006. They found adopting DST resulted in an increase in energy consumption. "We estimate a cost of increased electricity bills to Indiana households of $9 million per year." They estimated social costs of increased pollution emissions to be in the millions of dollars, and "the effect is likely to be even stronger in other regions of the United States."
Other studies find DST is actually increasing energy consumption because Americans are moving to warmer climates. DST causes Americans to use more air conditioning.
Hundreds of scientific studies link the seasonal clock change due to DST to persistent misalignment of body clocks, increased rates of heart attacks, cancer, diabetes, obesity, depression and suicide attempts.
An University of Alabama at Birmingham study found that the risk of a heart attack increases 10 percent the Monday and Tuesday following the spring time change. The risk of having a stroke goes up eight percent during the first two days after the beginning of DST, according to one Finnish study.
Using a large database of 732,835 fatal motor vehicle accidents (MVA) recorded from 1996 to 2017, a 2019 study found a 6% increase in fatal MVA risk during the week following the spring forward transition to DST, which was more pronounced in the morning and in the western part of each time zone. There were no effects of the fall back transition to standard time on MVA risk, supporting the hypothesis that circadian misalignment and sleep deprivation increases the risk of MVA.
German chronobiologist, Dr. Till Roenneberg notes that human circadian clocks do not adjust to DST and consequently "the majority of the population has drastically decreased productivity, decreased quality of life, increasing susceptibility to illness, and is just plain tired."
A 2009 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that mine workers arrived at work with 40 minutes less sleep and experienced 6% more workplace injuries in the week directly following the spring forward time shift than during any other days of the year which researchers thought was most likely due to disruption in the workers' sleep cycles. DST means getting up an hour earlier; forcing teenagers to wake up early, against their internal rhythms, leads to stress. As many studies have shown, stress leads to unhealthy decisions such as smoking and drinking.
Cows do not like DST because their milking patterns do not change with the time. Most farmers do not like DST because it means they have less time in the morning to get their milk and harvested crops to market.
Most countries that tried DST have abandoned it, with Brazil and Mexico being recent examples.
Permanent DST is not a solution. Russia tried year-round DST in 2011 and moved to permanent standard time in 2014. America has tried permanent DST in the past and it failed. As a result of the oil embargo that began in October 1973, The Emergency Daylight Saving Time Energy Conservation Act made DST effective year-round in 1974. Lawmakers ended that experiment early. Permanent DST was unpopular then, and it is unpopular now.
The National PTA is opposed to permanent DST for safety reasons as it would make for darker mornings for kids headed to school.
Experts in circadian rhythms and sleep health recommend year-round standard time as the preferred option for public health and safety.
It is time for Congress to abandon this outdated practice and move to year-round standard time for the betterment of the environment, public health, safety, and prosperity.