Former EPA officials: Trump is letting data centers make people sick

Filed 1h ago · Via Grist · The Buffoon Desk

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Blue Feather

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: European Parliament · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

Former EPA officials working with the Environmental Protection Network say the Trump administration has taken at least 30 actions since January 2025 weakening pollution rules, permitting requirements, and inspections tied to the data center boom powering AI. The country has about 3,000 data centers now, with 1,500 more planned, even as EPA's research office has been dismantled and enforcement staff told not to disrupt energy production.

Dan Costa, a 35-year EPA veteran, described a research workforce that once studied emerging pollution threats on behalf of the public now hollowed out. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has framed the deregulation as necessary to make America the 'AI Capital of the World,' including easing rules on fossil-fuel turbines and letting construction start before air permits are secured.

A study cited in the new report estimates AI-linked pollution could cause 1,300 additional deaths annually, with effects ranging from heart attacks and premature births to long-term cancer risk. Physician Lynn Goldman said families shouldn't have to pay for the AI industry's race with their health.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

An agency that spent fifty years learning to measure smoke is being told to look the other way while the smoke doubles. Nobody voted to trade clean air for faster chatbots, but that is the deal on the table now, and the bill lands quietly, in emergency rooms and maternity wards. A government that can't count the damage isn't saving money, it's just hiding the invoice.

Source: Read the original at Grist → Scored: Blue Feather · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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