Can we use research and policy to change (or not change) the clocks for the last time? //

In 2022, Gentry and an interdisciplinary team of colleagues added to that body of research, publishing a study in the journal Time & Society that showed the rate of fatal motor-vehicle accidents was highest for people living in the far west of a time zone, where the sun rises and sets at least an hour later than on the eastern side. Chronobiology research shows that longer evening light can keep people up later and that, as Gentry found, morning darkness can make it harder to get going for work or school. Western-edge folks may suffer more deadly car wrecks, the team theorized, because they are commuting in the dark while sleep deprived and not fully alert.

With all the hullabaloo over the health and safety of setting clocks forward an hour in the spring for Daylight Saving Time (DST) and back in the fall with Standard Time (ST), could where you live in a time zone actually have a more profound effect? I asked Gentry. “That’s very possible,” he said.

Time researchers make this point, and research results and public opinion polls reflect it: Something is awry about the way we mark time. //

Permanent DST meant that the sun also rose and set later in the winter. Results published in 2017 associated year-round DST with a greater likelihood of feeling down in the winter as well as sleeping later on weekends, a phenomenon known as social jet lag. Chronobiologist Till Roenneberg and colleagues coined the term nearly two decades ago to describe the chronic sleep deprivation that people experience when they have to get up for school or work before they would awaken naturally. //

“We all agree as researchers that the safer option is to go for perennial Standard Time,” said Blume, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel in Switzerland.

The nonprofit organization Save Standard Time lists endorsements from more than 30 sleep-science and medical organizations—including the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, the American Medical Association, and the American Academy of Neurology among others—in addition to individual scientists and researchers.

Here, I feel compelled to note that the last time we tried permanent DST, it didn’t go well. In attempt to conserve energy, Congress established a trial period of year-round DST in late 1973. But public approval dropped precipitously as Americans faced the reality of dark winter mornings. By October 1974, the country had reverted to four months of yearly ST. //

Things gets interesting on either side of a time-zone boundary, where the sun position is essentially the same, but the clock time is different. In late January, for example, the sun sets around 6:10 pm in Columbus, Georgia in Eastern Time, but at 5:10 pm just over the time-zone border in Auburn, Alabama.

People living on the late-sunset side of a time-zone border, like those in Columbus, tend to go to bed later, sleeping an average of around 20 minutes less each night than those on the early-sunset side, like those in Auburn, according to a 2019 study published in the Journal of Health Economics. Drawing on large national surveys and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, researchers found that health outcomes associated with sleep deficiency and social jet lag were worse for the late-sunset folks. Their wages were also about 3 percent lower than those of early-sunset people, who, better rested, were presumably more productive. //

Another tricky aspect of time zones is that they don’t strictly adhere to longitude lines but instead meander to accommodate city and state boundaries. In the US, all the time zones except Pacific Time encompass areas west of what would be the natural time-zone boundary. Communication professor Jeffery Gentry and a team that included Eastern New Mexico University professors with expertise in geography, biology, and education have dubbed those regions west of the geographic time zone “eccentric time localities,” or ETLs.

In these ETLs, sunrise and sunset time may occur more than an hour later than the eastern side of the time zone. For example, geographically, Marquette, Michigan, should be in Central Time, but instead, the city lies in an ETL in Eastern Time. In late October, the sun rises at around 7:10 a.m. Eastern Time in Bangor, Maine, but not until around 8:30 am in Marquette. //

Gentry would like to see time zones redrawn. But other policy fixes could help as well. //

A body of research shows that even dim light can suppress melatonin production and delay sleep. Blue light from fluorescent lights and our ubiquitous screens, which has the shortest wavelength and highest energy of light that the human eye can see, has a particularly powerful effect on circadian rhythms. //

And, although it sounds like a radical idea, states could also adjust time-zone boundaries. “I don’t think we want 10 time zones, but maybe we add one for the Northeast,” said Malow. Because the New England states are so far east, winter sunsets come early—before 4 pm in December in parts of Maine. //

nimelennar Ars Praefectus
6y
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Subscriptor
Dzov said:
lol. Make sunup and sundown always 8am and 8pm respectively and your work day lengthens and shortens throughout the year and based on your latitude.
You can work at the North or South Pole. You punch in at 8 a.m., and punch out at 8 p.m., six months later.