The artificial intelligence boom poses serious health risks while the Trump administration is dismantling crucial safeguards designed to protect the public, according to former officials at the federal agency responsible for environmental protection.
A report released Thursday by the Environmental Protection Network—an organization led by former Environmental Protection Agency staffers—outlines hazards from the rapid rise of data centers. Among those is pollution from increased power demand, which is linked to asthma, cancer, neurological harm and heart and lung disease.
The EPA’s stated mission is to protect human health and the environment. But under President Donald Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, the federal government has targeted pollution limits and safeguards, weakened enforcement of environmental rules, expanded fossil fuel power generation and moved to give the AI industry dangerous carveouts, experts warn.
“Our government and especially EPA should be making choices that protect people’s health, not choices that leave families carrying more pollution and more risk,” Marc Boom, senior director of public affairs at EPN and a former senior advisor at the EPA, said at a press briefing.
As data center electricity demand grows, the Trump administration is pushing fossil fuel energy over the development of cleaner options. The EPN report outlines 30 federal actions that it says increase pollution-related health risks, though the authors note it’s not an exhaustive list. The actions include extending the life of fossil fuel plants that were soon to be retired, expanding coal while loosening requirements for coal-ash cleanup, rolling back clean air rules and fast-tracking data-center permitting.
“Clean Air Act requirements don’t bend for industry, but they also should not be weaponized,” wrote EPA spokesperson Cora Mandy in an emailed statement. “In each action EPA has taken, the agency has returned regulations to the best reading [of] the Clean Air Act after years of overreach by previous administrations.”
Mandy added that one pillar of the Trump administration’s EPA agenda is to make America “the AI Capital of the World.”
Americans broadly oppose the rapid data center buildout, often citing rising utility bills, water demand, low job creation and localized noise and air pollution. A YouGov survey of registered voters conducted for EPN in April found that 84 percent thought Trump should be tougher on corporations that violate environmental laws and more than two-thirds were highly concerned about policies that fast-track data center projects.
“Data centers and the way that they’re not being regulated are threatening to take us back 200 years by building fossil fuel and polluting infrastructure right on top of where people live,” said Saul Levin, program director at the Center for Nonviolent Conflict Research and host of The Hum, a podcast about data center resistance.
Levin speaks with people opposing data centers across the country and said they often share health-related concerns.
“When it comes to health, people just know that they’re being fed something that’s a bad deal in every way,” Levin said.
More pollution means more missed days of school and work, higher medical bills and more illness and death, the former federal workers wrote in the EPN report. They called on the EPA to put public health ahead of AI expansion by restoring and enforcing pollution safeguards.
“If America is going to undertake an industrial and energy buildout of this magnitude, we should not be taking away the environmental cops’ resources or restricting their ability to act—we should be strengthening the EPA’s ability to hold polluting facilities accountable,” said Larry Starfield, a former principal deputy assistant administrator in the EPA’s enforcement office.
“We still do not know the full health toll, and that should argue for more vigilance, not less.”
— Dr. Lynn Goldman, former EPA assistant administrator
In a study from June, researchers at universities in California and New York found that under a high-growth scenario for the data center industry, its air pollution could contribute to roughly 600,000 asthma symptom cases, 1,300 premature deaths and more than $20 billion in public health costs in 2028.
That doesn’t account for recent federal rollbacks, noted Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator.
“These alarming numbers may capture only part of the picture,” Goldman said. “We still do not know the full health toll, and that should argue for more vigilance, not less.”
Although much of the health fallout from policy decisions today will unfold over decades, Goldman noted that some will be immediate, like impacts on pregnant people and fetal development, or heart attacks caused by excessive particulate matter pollution.
“Some of the health impacts from air pollution that are the worst impacts play out in real time,” Goldman said. “It does not take years and years to see an increase in death from that kind of pollution.”
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Keerti Gopal
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Keerti Gopal covers intersections between climate change, public health and environmental justice at Inside Climate News. Previously, she covered climate activism and movement repression. She is a National Geographic Explorer and has received fellowships from Fulbright, the Solutions Journalism Network, The Lever, and the National Press Foundation.
