The Adverse Health Effects of Daylight Saving Time

According to David Gorski, of Science Based Medicine, DST barely reduces energy expenditures, if at all, while imposing considerable adverse health effects.  Here is the gist of the health point:

A more recent study in 2016 published in the American Economic Journal estimated that the impact of DST from 2002-2011 resulted in over 30 deaths at a social cost of $275 million annually and that this result is most consistent with sleep deprivation as a cause. Yet another study (this one from 2004) estimates that never changing the clock all year round would reduce pedestrian fatalities by 171 per year, or 13% of all pedestrian fatalities in the 5:00–10.00 a.m. and in the 4:00–9:00 p.m. time periods, and motor vehicle occupant fatalities by 195 per year, or 3%. A 2014 study from the University of Colorado Boulder found a spike in fatal automobile crashes during the six days following the shift to DST. The list goes on.

Risk on the road and sidewalk is not the only health risk from DST, though. For instance, there is evidence of a small but real increase in heart attacks. Swedish data suggest the risk of myocardial infarction to be significantly elevated for the first three weekdays after the transition to DST. A 2013 study in The American Journal of Cardiology found a similar result, with an increase in heart attack rates the Sunday after the shift to DST.

Gorski refers to DST as "Lunacy." You can read the whole article here.

Comments

[Deep State Special Legal Counsel]

If you can show how this lowers taxes on the ultra wealthy job creators and impacts law abiding white gun owners' SECOND AMENDMENT right to own an Uzi, Congress might do something. Maybe throw in Hobby Lobby and Terry Schiavo and you have a case.

[ChicagoD]

Wait till you are working in Asia or spending half the year there. The time difference goes between 13 hours and 14 hours to Chicago from China, 14-15 hours from Japan, etc. It makes conference calls and family face time a mess.

Then you have to explain it to the people there, and they don't get it.

[concerned_citizen]

ChicagoD, re doing business in China, note Daylight Savings Time reduces the difference, not increases it.

You should have more of a complaint when you go back to Standard time, which is when (e.g.) your time difference Chicago-Beijing (or anywhere in China with its "Beijing Time Must Be Everyone's Time" policy) goes from 13 up to 14 hours.

The really fun ones are places that observe DST or "summer time" but are off the US schedule by a bit, and for which summer/winter time are reversed.

Take Auckland for example. Last week while still on US Eastern standard time, I was offset from Auckland by 18 hours, which is currently on their summer time or DST. We just went to DST so for the next couple of weeks I'm 17 hours off. In 2 weeks they go off their summer time, turning clocks back an hour, so we'll be 16 hours off. This fall, because we go back to standard time a few weeks before they begin their summer time again, we'll phase from 16 to 17 then to 18 hours offset again within just a few weeks.

Same thing happens with Sydney, except it's 16-15-14 spring and 14-15-16 heading into the fall.