March 13 (UPI) — The U.S. clock springs forward one hour early Sunday morning due to Daylight Saving Time.
At 2 a.m., the clock will turn forward 1 hour to 3 a.m.
There will be more light in the evening with sunrise and sunset occurring about an hour later for eight months until the clock falls back an hour to standard time in early November, but some dread losing the hour.
Some health experts have warned that DST could be bad for health.
Adults lose an average of 15 minutes to 20 minutes of sleep during DST changes, sleep experts said in a Vanderbilt University Medical Center report, and the sleep loss could increase risk of fatal accidents.
The time change eliminates bright morning light that’s crucial to synchronizing the biological clock, possibly increasing risks of heart attack, stroke and other harmful effects of sleep depravation, said Dr. Beth Ann Malow, director of the Sleep Disorders Division at VUMC in Nashville.
“People think the one-hour transition is no big deal, that they can get over this in a day but what they don’t realize is their biological clock is out of sync,” Malow said in a statement.
In Florida, legislators have called to eliminate the time change and make Daylight Saving Time permanent.
“Soon, we will have to comply with the senseless twice a year ‘time change,” Sen. Marc Rubio tweeted Wednesday. “We need to pass my bill to make daylight savings permanent. More daylight in the evenings results in fewer car accidents and robberies. And it allows kids to play outside longer.”
However, some parents and teachers oppose year-round DST because it would create darker winter mornings, which they say could put children’s safety at risk, The Washington Post reported.
The United States last experimented with year-round DST amid the 1970s energy crisis from 1974 to October 1975, but with critics opposing sending children to school in the dark, the experiment was scrapped, and clocks were switched back to standard time in winter months.
“Permanent #StandardTime — not perma-DST — is best for health/safety,” Jay Pea, founder of Save Standard Time, tweeted Saturday.
DST has begun on the second Sunday in March since 2007 with Hawaii and Arizona being the only two states that don’t observe it.
Germany was the first country to observe DST in 1916 to conserve energy during World War I and the rest of Europe followed. In 1918, the United States government standardized DST for the states who chose to have it. Congress abolished DST after the end of WWI, and it wasn’t used again until World War II, when DST became mandatory nationwide to save wartime resources.
