[tz] Daylight saving and heart attacks

Tim Parenti tim at timtimeonline.com
Tue Jun 25 01:51:19 UTC 2019


On Mon, 24 Jun 2019 at 20:06, Paul Eggert <eggert at cs.ucla.edu> wrote:

> One way to tease out the effects of daylight saving time is to look at
> the health records of people near a time zone boundary, as you get a
> one-hour civil-time difference for free.


This could, of course, be confounded somewhat in boundary cases where there
are mixed economic ties.  A friend who grew up near the Dearborn/Franklin
County line in southeastern Indiana (prior to statewide observance of DST
starting in 2006) spoke of his home operating on a combination of "School
Time" (EST) and "Fast Time" (EDT) whenever clocks differed.  It seems
likely that folks faced with such a situation would pick one system as
their primary, while simply contending with the apparent seasonal changes
in the other.  I'd think *that* type of disruption could be just as taxing.

As one data point, the Eastern/Central boundary in the US is effectively
invisible when it comes to prime-time television broadcasts.  Does the
"late local news" report coming on an hour earlier affect bed times, and
correspondingly when public affairs and activities are conducted in the
evenings?  If strong ties to the east coast in certain areas were to affect
work and school times, too, it would nullify the "social time difference",
but the health effects described could actually be exacerbated in the
western extremities of a two-hour-wide "cultural time zone".

--
Tim Parenti
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