When you retrieve the contents of a "timestamp with timezone" field, this will set the environment's timezone variables. Therefore, this is dangerous:
$s=$row->mydatefield;
$unixtimestamp=postgresqltimestamp2unix($s);
echo date("Y-m-d H:i:s",$unixtimestamp);
Here, postgresqltimestamp2unix is a function that converts the postgresql timestamp to Unix. The retrieval of the field data in the first line of the example above will influence the timezone used in date() in the third line.