Daylight saving time returns: in the night between Saturday 30 e Sunday 31st the hands will have to be moved forward one hour. A transition that has effects on health, energy, bills and the environment, to the point that 336 thousand Italians have already signed the online petition to make summer time permanent all year round. This was stated by the Italian Society of Environmental Medicine (Sima) which together with non-profit Consumerismo has started a collection of signatures to ask the Government for permanent summer time.
The savings
«On the energy front – Sima calculated – the adoption of permanent summer time all year round would produce lower energy consumption in our country of around 720 million equivalent kWh and, if we consider only the current electricity tariffs on the protected market , resulting in bill savings of around 180 million euros per year. According to Terna, from 2004 to 2022 our country has saved around 2 billion euros and 10.9 billion kWh of electricity thanks to summer time. Added to this would be a massive cut in climate-changing emissions equal to 200 thousand tons less CO2, equivalent to that absorbed by planting 2 to 6 million new trees.”
Impact on health
«The transition from summer time to solar time and vice versa also has negative repercussions on human health – explained president Alessandro Miani -. The circadian rhythmicity is altered, i.e. the biological clock of our organism which, in the absence of signals from the external environment, completes its cycle in approximately 24 hours. Failure to respect these natural rhythms has effects on blood pressure and heart rate: several studies have attested to a correlation between time changes and heart disease, with Stockholm University reporting an incidence of +4% of heart attacks in the week following the transition to the new timetable. Sleep problems are also recorded in a significant portion of the population, with negative consequences on concentration and mood and therefore on academic performance, efficiency at work, personal relationships, etc. Other studies have then certified a correlation between the transition from summer time to standard time and the increase in road and workplace accidents, while research conducted in Australia even found an increase in suicides in the first weeks of the time change”. «For these reasons we ask the Meloni government to commit to definitively abandoning solar time in Italy by adopting summer time all year round. A possibility foreseen by the European Union which already in 2019 approved a Directive that puts an end to the double time change during the year, leaving wide discretion to the Member States, hoping for coordination between the various nations to avoid repercussions on trade and cross-border movements” , concludes Miani.
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2024-03-29 02:23:55
