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Former EPA researchers warn that the Trump administration's systematic rollback of pollution safeguards is removing guardrails around the rapidly expanding AI data center industry, potentially endangering public health.

What is a key fact in this story? (1)

**Former EPA researchers** at the Environmental Protection Network warn in a new report that since January 2025, Trump's EPA has taken at least 30 actions weakening pollution safeguards, permitting processes, and inspections tied to data center expansion, with about 3,000 centers currently operating and 1,500+ in planning stages.

What is a key fact in this story? (2)

**EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin** wrote in a memo that the agency is "committed to bolstering" AI efforts by "cutting heavy-handed regulations" to make America "the AI Capital of the World."

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

By Grist · Summarized & edited by Kapil Samant · 2026-09-20

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Former EPA researchers at the Environmental Protection Network warn in a new report that since January 2025, Trump's EPA has taken at least 30 actions weakening pollution safeguards, permitting processes, and inspections tied to data center expansion, with about 3,000 centers currently operating and 1,500+ in planning stages.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a memo that the agency is "committed to bolstering" AI efforts by "cutting heavy-handed regulations" to make America "the AI Capital of the World."
The EPA has proposed a rule change allowing data center developers to begin constructing facilities and associated power plants before obtaining air pollution permits, and directed enforcement staff to avoid actions that could "unduly burden or significantly disrupt" energy production.
Deregulation moves include keeping old coal-fired plants online past their planned decommissioning and easing rules on onsite fossil fuel-powered turbines at hyperscale sites like xAI's Colossus.
Dan Costa, a 35-year EPA air pollution veteran, said the agency's main research office has been dismantled, gutting the scientific capacity to assess pollution impacts.
A study cited in the report estimates AI-boom pollution could cause 1,300 additional deaths per year, with physician and former EPA official Lynn Goldman warning of particulate-related heart attacks, premature births, and cancer.

Why it matters: Roughly 1,500 data centers are in planning while the EPA's own scientific capacity to assess their pollution has been gutted, meaning the human cost of AI expansion will arrive without the monitoring infrastructure needed to measure it. Communities near hyperscale sites like xAI's Colossus face the most direct exposure, and the 1,300-deaths-per-year estimate gives the deregulation a concrete public health price tag.