If permanent Daylight Saving Time is so popular, why is it dead in the Senate?
How much of an inconvenience is changing clocks twice a year? Enough to drive politicians to pass a bill in the House to end the practice. But as excitement over the measure dies, a sleep doctor told Straight Arrow the new change could be dangerous.
Hours after the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, representatives and governors celebrated online for “finally” having a solution to what they called a problem in changing the clocks every March and November. Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., wrote the legislation and said in a July 14 release that it’s an issue Americans could agree on: locking the clock.
“Permanent daylight saving time will improve public safety, promote healthier and more active lifestyles and give families more daylight to enjoy after work and school,” Buchanan said.
The U.S. isn’t the only country that observes the time change. About a third of the world uses Daylight Saving Time, according to the Pew Research Center.
But Dr. Kin Yuen, a sleep medicine doctor at the University of California, San Francisco Health, told Straight Arrow that winter hours cannot be added or taken away because of the time change. No matter what, she said people on the East Coast will see an average of five hours of daylight, while the West Coast averages 10 hours.
Yuen is part of the Save Standard Time, which has advocated for states to adopt Standard Time over Daylight Saving Time. Multiple medical associations have endorsed legislation for permanent Standard Time, including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, several statewide groups and the National Sleep Foundation.
“We do truly believe that this is overall much better for our patients’ health and for the health of growing children and adolescents all around,” Yuen said.
The most recent state to join the practice is Hawaii. All U.S. territories except for Washington, D.C. are on Standard Time. According to the group, six states have pending legislation to make standard time permanent.
“It’s a fallacy to believe that simply having the time earlier in the wintertime that we can lengthen the day,” Yuen said.
She has likely allies in the Senate that plan to fight the bill, Reuters reported Monday.
Doctor: Science supports Standard Time
Yuen noted that when clocks change in March, it’s difficult for a sector of night owls to fall asleep as their internal clocks naturally don’t wind down until around 3 a.m. When an hour of sleep is lost, she said they have the biggest difficulty adjusting to the change.
“If they are not having sufficient time to sleep in the next morning, it greatly affects how they function,” she said.
She noted that concerns people had about the time change causing heart attacks and car crashes is only apparent during the spring forward. She equated that to losing an hour of sleep overnight and people’s bodies not being used to daylight differences so drastically.
Similar observations are noted when people travel across time zones, but Yuen said that habits are changed to adapt to the new zones. In changing clocks, she said nothing else changes.
In the instance of jet lag, patients’ symptoms of fatigue, inability to fall asleep and waking up early resolve in about five to seven days, depending on how much time a person spent in the new time zone.
“But just moving the clock, it’s a very artificial process, and our hormones cannot adapt that quickly,” she said.
Biologically, Yuen said that having darkness in the evening and bright light in the morning allows people’s circadian rhythms to adapt. Longer periods of darkness, which she said Daylight Time would cause, complicate melatonin production in one’s brain.
Medical professionals appear to have some support in Congress, with some politicians agreeing that permanent Daylight Saving Time isn’t suitable.
Permanent Daylight Time produces dark mornings for some
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., has said the measure would spark dangerous morning commutes for both workers and schoolchildren. In an October floor speech against the Senate bill, Cotton said the 1974 implementation of Daylight Saving Time caused commuter trains to be delayed and at least one child was killed walking to school in the dark.
“If permanent Daylight Savings Time becomes the law of the land, it will again make winter a dark and dismal time for millions of Americans,” Cotton said.
Part of Cotton’s argument is that several states that border time zones or those in the north would face a lopsided amount of daylight hours compared to the rest of the country.
In the instance of Arkansas, the state isn’t on the edge of the Central Time Zone, but Cotton said winter sunrises would occur between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. He noted that more northern states face a tougher challenge and won’t see the sunrise until around 9 a.m. in Seattle, 9:15 a.m. in Grand Rapids, Mich., and 9:45 a.m. in Williston, N.D.
“Meanwhile, construction workers, farmers, and others who rise before the sun or need the sun to work would be penalized,” Cotton said. “These workers might go three, four, even five hours in the morning without seeing the sun, which would hurt their quality of life and potentially their safety in the workplace.”
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
