Sleep expert and UBC professor emeritus says there are risks, but also benefits to Daylight Saving Time.
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The idea of saving energy by switching to Daylight Saving Time has gone on for years, but is now being disputed.
What do you think of daylight saving time?
Parents often argued that having their children wait for school buses during the dawn as an argument against having year-long daylight savings time.
Daylight saving time is revered in the fall and reviled in the spring due to its effects on the nation’s sleep schedule.
Daylight Savings will begin at 2 a.m. March 13, 2016 and all clocks will “spring forward” an hour, costing many people an hour of asleep.
Dr. Stanley Coren adjusts his clock to the correct time.
First signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson during World War I, the original iteration of daylight saving time was called “fast time” and was meant to save fuel for the war effort.
On the other hand, that same study found the risk fell about as much in the fall, when clocks were turned back.
Congress in 1966 passed the Uniform Time Act, which, according to snopes.com, specified that daylight saving time begin on the last Sunday of April and end the last Sunday of October. Hawaii and Arizona are among the holdouts. One example is the Roman water clocks that used different scales for different months of the year. The time change will result in more daylight in the mornings but earlier sunsets.
Daylight Saving Time was introduced to save resources. But for many people the change is another reminder that winter is near, with the sun starting to sett before many Puget Sound region residents leave the office for home.
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However, all of those savings come in the summer months when daylight is extended into the evening. He suggested that if time was adjusted so that work hours were centred during daylight, people could save money on candle wax, which was expensive.
