Daylight

650 Words2 Pages

Daylight saving time is the process of changing the clocks forward or backward twice a year in order to save electricity by promoting people to spend more time outside. Daylight saving is a popular practice observed by many countries around the world, with some inconsistencies between the states and provinces inside of them. Germany was the first country to put daylight saving time into practice in 1916, more than 20 years after George Vernon Hudson first presented a paper on daylight saving time to the Wellington Philosophical Society in 1895 (Pavlus 69). The United States, Russia and the rest of Europe started to observe daylight saving time by 1918. Because of the problems it causes, like health issues, a rise in car accidents and more electricity usage, daylight saving time should be removed.

Daylight saving time causes several issues. One of the issues it causes is sleep deprivation. Our circadian rhythm is rather delicate and switching the clocks back and forward an hour is extremely disrupting to both our mental and psychical heath. The effects that changing the clocks forward and backward has, like tiredness, worse memory and worse hand-eye coordination, can last weeks, even more for youths or people with sleep associated disorders such as insomnia (Pavlus 69). Another problem that sleep deprivation is commonly associated with is a large buildup of stress. The buildup in stress is shown to lead to a large increase in both depression and suicide (BERK 2).. That is not the only problem either. Daylight saving time is also thought to be associated with a large spike in heart attacks that occurs in the week following when we set the clocks forward. The spike is shown to increase heart attacks from approximately 5% to 10% (Pa...

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...ht saving time, all of the problems would go away. The health issues would go away because without us changing the clocks our circadian rhythm would not get disrupted. The rise in car accidents would go away because people would not be lacking sleep and would not be leaving when there is not much light. And more electricity usage would go away because people would not be staying up in hotter places, using air conditioning.

Works Cited

Pavlus, John. "Daylight Savings Time." Scientific American 303.3 2010: 69. Academic Search Complete. Web. 2 Apr. 2014.
Lahti, Tuuli, et al. "Daylight Saving Time Transitions and Road Traffic Accidents." Journal of Environmental & Public Health 2010: 1-3. Academic Search Complete. Web. 5 Apr. 2014.
Austin, April. "'Daylight saving' is a misnomer." Christian Science Monitor 25 Oct. 2000: 15. Academic Search Complete. Web. 28 Apr. 2014.

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