Should the U.S. Switch to Permanent Daylight Savings Time?

Switching to Daylight Savings Time gives us an extra hour of sunlight in the evenings during Spring and Summer months -- but is it helpful or hazardous? Learn more in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/earth/geophysics/permanent-daylight-saving-time-news.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio.
Hey brain Stuff, Learn Voga Bam. Here. There's a common
consensus that changing the clocks back and forth twice a
year is annoying, and the U. S. Government decided to
do something about it. On March fift the Senate unanimously

(00:22):
passed a bill to make daylight savings time permanent across
the country. As of this recording, the bill still needs
to pass in the House of Representatives and be signed
by President Joe Biden. While this would eliminate the irritating
aspect of changing clocks back and forth, many scientists, public
health experts, and members of the public are wondering whether

(00:42):
it would be a good thing overall, and so today
let's look at the pros and cons. Okay, Daylight savings
time is the practice of advancing the clock one hour
ahead of standard time in the spring and summer months
so that people get to experience more daylight in the
evening during those months. In the United States, daylight savings

(01:03):
time is observed between the second Sunday in March and
the first Sunday in November. The policy seems simple. Most
clocks are fairly easy to adjust, but our bodies are
more complicated than most clocks. For the article, this episode
is based on How Stuff Works, spoke with Dr Elizabeth Klerman,
a professor of neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard

(01:25):
Medical School. She explained that humans have three different clocks
that our lives and bodies must adhere to. She said,
one is local clock time, a social clock, what's on
your watch on your computer. The second is sun time,
when the sun goes up and when the sun goes down.
And the third is biological time. It's what time of

(01:46):
day your body clock thinks it is. Our bodies naturally
follow sun time, not social time, and therefore, when we
switch from standard time to daylight savings, we feel groggy
and tired. The implementation of daylight savings every year is
like waking up one time zoned to the east. We
feel jet lagged. A. Klerman said, daylight savings time shifts

(02:10):
the social clock, but not the sun clock or the
body clock. Statistics back up the problem of shifting between
the two. Report on cardiovascular events found that the Monday
following the shift to daylight savings is associated with a
two increase in heart attacks, and a different study spanning

(02:30):
thirty years of Australian data found that the rate of
suicides and men with bipolar disorders increased in the weeks
following daylight savings. Another study found that there are more
workplace injuries and of a more severe nature on the
mondays following the daylight savings shift, and yet another noted
that in the seven days following time changes, safety related

(02:51):
incidents increased by four point two percent in the spring
and eight point eight percent in the fall. And another
study showed that the risk of little car crashes increases
by six percent in the days following daylight savings, though
overall accidents during daylight savings time tend to decrease. The
U s Department of Transportation cites three reasons for daylight

(03:13):
savings time, energy savings, prevention of traffic injuries and death,
and crime reduction. All three have been studied before. In
two thousand and eight, the Department of Energy found that
the extra four weeks of daylight savings time, which were
added in two thousand seven, had saved zero point five
percent in total electricity per day. This might not seem

(03:35):
like much, but the Department of Energy noted that this
came out to a savings of quote one point three
billion kilowatt hours, or the amount of electricity used by
more than a hundred thousand households for an entire year.
However that number may be high. Review found the savings
to be around zero point three though in the grand scheme,

(03:56):
still not shabby. As far as traffic it goes, some
studies have cited fewer fatal car crashes during daylight savings
because of the extra daylight during the evening rush hour.
Study found an eight drop in pedestrian related crashes and
a six to ten percent drop in car crashes in
the weeks following the implementation of daylight savings. Regarding crime,

(04:21):
one study showed that robberies were reduced overall by seven
percent during daylight savings time and by whopping during the
extra daylight in the evening. Businesses that operate outdoors may
benefit from permanent daylight savings time. For example, farmers or
lawn workers who start work at eight am benefit during

(04:41):
daylight savings from the slightly cooler morning temperature of standard
times seven am, and tourists looking to get the most
out of their days may be encouraged by that extra
hour of evening sunlight, giving the travel industry a boost.
But since the Senate passed that permanent Daylight Savings Time bill,
several groups have come out against it, including the American

(05:04):
Academy of Sleep Medicine, the National Safety Council, and the
National Parent Teacher Association. They say that permanent standard time
is actually better for the body. The Clerman would agree.
In twenty nineteen, she co authored a paper published in
Frontiers and Physiology that laid out evidence of how daylight
savings time harms our health. She said, the misconception people

(05:28):
have is that there's more light. There's no more light,
it's just shifted. If you're an evening person and there's
more light at night, it will shift your body clock later.
So it's going to make life worse for later people
because they still have to wake up earlier for clock time.
All those later people who like it are actually getting
less sleep. The impacts aren't just happening in the week

(05:51):
following the springtime change either, Clerman said, it's about what's
happening over the entire season. There's misalignment between the body
clock and clock time because it's one time zone different.
There's also insufficient sleep. Both of those have shown to
have adverse effects on performance, cardiovascular disease, errors, and accidents,

(06:13):
and in a statement in one the board chair of
the National Sleep Foundation, Dr Rick Bogan, said a switching
to permanent standard time would better align our bodies to
daily sunrise and sunset, which influences the natural sleep wake
cycles also called circadian rhythm. He pointed to a poll
showing that s Americans don't think they're sleep routines or

(06:35):
moods are affected by time changes, though they are. He continued,
we're seeing gaps between what the public thinks and both
published research and real world observations of the clock changes
effects on health. The change to permanent daylight savings time
in the United States has been tried before, the first
time for several months during World War One. It was

(06:58):
adopted again during World War Two to conserve fuel and
was officially known as war time. When polled, only seventeen
percent of Americans wanted to stick with war time once
the war was over, so it was stopped in nineteen five.
The third instance was during the energy crisis between nineteen
seventy four and nineteen seventy five. This time it was

(07:18):
abandoned because children were tragically hit by vehicles during the
dark morning hours while waiting for the school bus. In
some states, the sun didn't rise until nine am during
daylight savings time. After nine months of permanent daylight savings,
the government ended it. Where Americans stand on the issue
today depends on which survey you look at. According to

(07:40):
Associated Press poll, only percent of Americans liked to switch
back and forth wanted permanent standard time, and thirty two
percent wanted permanent daylight savings. However, in CBS News poll,
the leading preference was to switch, with permanent either coming

(08:00):
in about equal. Today's episode is based on the article
should the US move to permanent daylight savings time? On
how stuff works dot com written by Alison Troutner. Brain
Stuff is production of I heart Radio in partnership with
how stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang.
Four more podcasts from my heart Radio visit the i

(08:22):
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