The health risks of daylight savings time explained

Residents of the United States are being persuaded to move their watches: a Russian scientist does not advise

American scientists from the University of Washington called on compatriots to switch to summer time forever. They motivated this by the need to reduce accidents with forest animals in the winter season. The corresponding article was published in the journal Current Biology.

According to the researchers, fixing the hands for daylight saving time will help reduce the number of traffic accidents with deer, elk and other animals in national parks by 16 percent.

The fact is that in the United States they still practice the transfer of arrows to summer and winter time. That is, by moving the clock forward in the spring, in the fall, the Americans again take it back, as was done recently in Russia. However, such a transition to winter time, according to scientists, is costly for the country’s ecology.

The researchers combined data from 23 regions of the United States over the past ten years and concluded that more than a million accidents with animals on forest roads occurred during this period. Arrivals were made 14 times more often in the first hours after sunset during the first two weeks after the switch to winter time. The reason for this, according to scientists, was poor visibility on the roads.

Comments by a sleep expert, head of the somnology section of the Physiological Society. I.P. Pavlov Russian Academy of Sciences Vladimir Kovalzon:

– In general, for the prevention of accidents with animals all over the world it is customary to build fences on the roads. In the most advanced countries, crossings over roads or tunnels under the roadway are being built.

As for the translation of the arrows, its harm to human health has long been proven. We physiologists believe that it is most useful to stay not on summer or winter time, but on natural, solar time.

Painful mania to shift time zones is characteristic of officials in many countries. It is impossible to play with time on a national scale. Sometimes officials write to the State Duma from some region: “We want to live by Moscow time.” But they do not understand that because of this they will have an increase in the number of cancers, accidents on the roads, and failure in schools will increase.

Now about American animals suffering after sunset under the wheels of cars when the country switches to winter time … Have American scientists not taken into account the fact that if fixed on summer time, the poor fellows will suffer from the same thing, but in the morning?

– Remind me, what time do we live in Russia now?

– We have stopped translating the arrows both in summer and in winter for an hour, canceling the so-called “Medvedev’s” time. But one hour of maternity time remained untranslated – the hands moved forward at the beginning of the last century. The clock is just fixed in our daylight saving time. Because of this, we are now one hour ahead of solar time in all zones.

– So we already live only in summer time?

– It turns out that it is, and it is wrong. According to the recommendation of physiologists, for the ideal working conditions of our biological clock, we in Russia need to make one collective withdrawal of the arrow back and then never touch it again.