Essay On Daylight Saving Time

536 Words2 Pages

Each and every year 75 countries, including the United States, move their clocks back in autumn only to move them forward again in the spring season. However, there are a few exceptions to this: Arizona and Hawaii, some US Territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Marianas Islands, and the Virgin Islands), Western Australia, Northern Brazil, and a whole slew of other countries outside of Europe and North America. To understand why this is, we must first look at the history and purpose of Daylight Savings Time. The idea was originally proposed by George Vernon Hudson in 1895 when he suggested the idea to the Royal Society of New Zealand. He was laughed at by the majority of the members whereas the others found it confusing. …show more content…

One of the main reasons it was initially adopted was because it was supposed to save energy. This was one of the main reasons why it was adopted during the World Wars. However, there is an ongoing debate that it doesn’t save electricity and in fact costs people more money. Irrespective, the margin isn’t hundreds of dollars in savings or loss. According to the NYTimes, it's about $3.30 that is being argued per household. That isn’t worth the real cost of Daylight Savings Time: sleep deprivation. The monday after Daylight Savings Time, a day where everyone has to go to work and school after losing one full hour of sleep, shows a decrease in worker productivity. The cost of that according to RescueTime.com, adds up to about $13.30 per worker in the United States. That totals to a whopping $480 million dollars lost to a decreases in worker productivity. Not only that, but hospitals see a spike in incidents of myocardial infarction, also known as heart attack. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, Daylight Savings Time in the spring sees a 95% increase in heart attack victims. They attribute this to a disruption in chronobiological rhythms that influence our quality and length of sleep. The main culprit? One less hour due to Daylight Savings

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