Former EPA officials: Trump is letting data centers make people sick — SkimNews
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- Environmental Protection Network, a nonprofit of former EPA researchers, identified at least 30 Trump EPA actions since January 2025 that weakened pollution safeguards, permitting processes, and inspections tied to the data center buildout.
- The U.S. currently has about 3,000 data centers with 1,500+ new facilities in planning stages, expanding rapidly under the administration's pro-AI deregulatory push.
- Dan Costa, a 35-year EPA air pollution veteran, said the agency's main research office has been dismantled, warning that "diminishing its scientific capacity to understand what the impacts are going to be" while transforming the energy system "makes no sense."
- EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a memo that the agency is "committed" to cutting "heavy-handed regulations" to make America "the AI Capital of the World."
- The EPA has proposed letting developers begin constructing data centers and their power plants before obtaining air pollution permits, and directed enforcement staff to avoid actions that "unduly burden or significantly disrupt" energy production.
- Deregulation has kept coal-fired plants online past planned decommissioning and eased rules on onsite fossil fuel turbines powering hyperscale centers like xAI's Colossus.
- A study cited in the report estimated AI-boom pollution could cause 1,300 additional deaths per year; physician and former EPA official Lynn Goldman warned of near-term impacts including heart attacks and premature births from particulate exposure.
Why it matters: Trump EPA's 30+ deregulation actions coincide with a massive buildout — 3,000 existing centers and 1,500+ planned — meaning communities near new sites could face heightened particulate exposure before any permitting review. Former EPA officials' cited study estimating 1,300 additional deaths per year from AI-boom pollution frames this as a public-health cost the current regulatory framework is no longer positioned to mitigate.
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