By Stone Malean / For The Herald
When clocks turn ahead an hour in the spring for daylight savings time, losing an hour of sleep isn’t the worst thing that can happen to people; yet studies have found that heart attack rates went up by 24% on the Monday of daylight savings, and stroke rates went up 8% on the 2 days following the time change.
Switching times biannually goes against people’s natural clocks, ruining productivity and moods. It is extremely unpopular, and it creates health risks for the days after the change. Because of the negative effects of this law, Washington state should ban the current policy and permanently stay in daylight saving time.
Daylight saving was introduced in 1916, in order to save energy in World War I. This may have been a good idea when we were at war, but now it isn’t the case. Based on a study from 2005, daylight saving only lowers national energy consumption by 0.5%. During World War I other fuel-saving measures got introduced, such as a voluntary “Gasless Sunday,” fuel rationing, and extra taxes on gasoline. These have since been abolished, because there is no large fuel scarcity in the U.S. like there was in World War I. There is no reason for daylight savings to be treated any differently than other wartime energy conservation measures, especially since it can indirectly cause thousands of deaths.
Daylight saving time can cause severe health risks. Among other things, losing sleep can cause higher blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for heart attacks. This translates into hundreds of more heart attacks per day in the U.S. alone. The same study found that on the two days following the daylight savings switch, the risks of a stroke went up by eight percent. This also causes another 1,000 deaths, that could all be easily prevented. Due to these health risks, there is no reason to keep this law around.
Another reason why switching back and forth doesn’t work well is because people are much less productive after switching to daylight savings time. Our internal clocks, or circadian rhythms, can take up to a few days to adjust after a time change, both in the spring and when we are set back an hour in the fall. Till Rosenburg, a German chronobiologist, says “the majority of the population has drastically decreased productivity, decreased quality of life, increasing susceptibility to illness, and is just plain tired.” This is one of the main reasons people dislike daylight savings, not getting enough sleep and consequentially having all around bad days. Another study from Ruth University Medical Center found a 6% increase in fatal auto accidents in the week after the springtime shift. The sleep impact caused by daylight savings clearly harms many people’s daily lives, leading to the conclusion that the downsides to this law outweigh the minimal upsides.
Another argument against switching clocks every year is its unpopularity. A 2022 CBS poll found that only 21% of Americans like switching back and forth from standard time to daylight savings. This is much lower than other polls taken when the law was first implemented, down about 60% from the initial implementation. Although people don’t like the daylight savings switch, its existence did help people realize that they preferred being in daylight time over standard time. From the same CBS study, 46% of Americans prefer being in daylight time all year, compared to 33% who prefer standard time, another large flip from when the state first started making the biannual switch. Most who prefer daylight savings all year say it puts them in a better mood, or makes them more productive. For whatever reason, with only a small minority liking the law, it should be replaced with something people actually want: complete removal of standard time in Washington state.
Going into the fall of 2025, Washington state shouldn’t have to switch back to standard time, which in the moment gets people an extra hour of sleep, but then we will have to go through the switch into daylight savings again the next year, and every year. The health risks, large unpopularity, and sleep loss people experience outweigh the tiny energy savings that caused the law to be implemented over 100 years ago.
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