While prominent tech executives and industry leaders frequently command headlines by grandstanding about the long-term, existential dangers that artificial intelligence superintelligence could theoretically pose to humanity, a group of former Environmental Protection Agency officials argues that the public is overlooking a far more immediate and tangible threat to human health. According to these experts, the true danger lies not in science-fiction scenarios of rogue algorithms, but in the physical, heavily polluting data centers required to power these advanced models on the ground.
These former EPA researchers, who are now lending their expertise to the nonprofit Environmental Protection Network, have issued a stark warning in a comprehensive new report. They detail how, since January 2025, Donald Trump’s administration and the current leadership at the EPA have embarked on a systematic effort to weaken critical pollution safeguards, permitting processes, inspection norms, and other regulatory guardrails. In total, the report points to at least 30 distinct policy actions and rollbacks that experts say could significantly exacerbate the health risks associated with the unprecedented national data center boom.
The expansion of digital infrastructure across the United States is currently moving at a breakneck speed. There are already approximately 3,000 active data centers operating across the country, and real estate and technology developers have more than 1,500 additional centers currently in various stages of planning and construction. However, as developers rush to build out this vast, immensely energy-hungry digital infrastructure, the nation is simultaneously stripping away the federal regulatory guardrails that were originally established to ensure such industrial expansion is conducted safely and responsibly. Without these checks, the ex-EPA officials warn, surrounding communities will bear the brunt of unregulated environmental degradation.
To understand the magnitude of this shift, one must look at the historical mission of the agency. Dan Costa, a career scientist who spent 35 years at the EPA studying the complex dynamics of air pollution, reflected on the agency’s foundational ethos during a recent press briefing. Established in 1970, the EPA long maintained a large, dedicated cadre of researchers whose primary mandate was to investigate emerging sources of pollution and identify new environmental threats before they could severely harm the public.
For decades, Costa noted, toxicologists, chemists, atmospheric scientists, predictive modelers, and environmental engineers worked collaboratively with academic institutions across the country on behalf of the American people, rather than yielding to the pressures of private industry. The shared goal among these public servants was straightforward: to faithfully carry out the EPA’s core statutory mission of protecting ordinary citizens from the harmful health impacts of industrial air pollution.
Today, however, that specialized federal workforce has been dramatically gutted. The Trump administration has moved to dismantle the EPA’s main research office, fundamentally altering the institutional culture and shifting the agency’s overarching priorities away from the strict enforcement of established environmental and pollution standards. Costa criticized this dual-track approach of accelerating industrial expansion while blinding the government to its consequences, stating that attempting to transform the nation’s entire energy system while simultaneously diminishing its scientific capacity to understand the resulting impacts makes no rational sense.
Despite these warnings, the administration remains firmly committed to its current trajectory. President Donald Trump is aggressively positioning the United States as the undisputed global leader in artificial intelligence and advanced technology. In a policy memo released last year, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin outlined the agency’s active role in supporting this national objective, writing that the EPA is fully committed to bolstering these technological efforts by actively cutting heavy-handed regulations to ensure America can rapidly build and power the massive data centers deemed essential to making the nation the AI capital of the world.
Since Donald Trump returned to the White House, data center developers and major technology firms have seized upon this favorable political climate to accelerate their expansion plans. Bolstered by the administration’s sweeping deregulation agenda, this rapid growth has manifested in several controversial ways across different regions of the country. In certain instances, this push for rapid electrification has involved keeping older, highly polluting coal-fired power plants online well past their previously scheduled decommissioning dates, specifically to provide the continuous baseload power required by modern data facilities. In other cases, developers have bypassed traditional utility grids entirely by easing regulations on the deployment of onsite, fossil fuel-powered gas turbines to supply energy directly to hyperscale data centers, such as xAI’s massive Colossus facility.
Furthermore, the agency has formally proposed a controversial rule change that would allow developers to begin constructing large-scale data centers and their associated dedicated power plants before they have even secured the necessary air pollution permits. Alongside this proposed change, leadership has explicitly directed the agency’s civil enforcement staff to avoid taking any regulatory actions that could be construed as unduly burdening or significantly disrupting domestic energy production or power generation.
The human and environmental toll of these policy decisions could be severe. According to one independent study cited by the former EPA researchers in their new report, the increased air pollution associated with the nationwide AI and data center boom may lead to as many as 1,300 additional premature deaths per year.
Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician, physician, and former high-ranking EPA administrative official, emphasized that while some of the adverse health consequences resulting from increased data center pollution might take years to fully manifest—such as the development of various forms of cancer—other acute impacts could be felt almost immediately by vulnerable populations living near these facilities. These immediate effects include severe cardiovascular events like heart attacks, as well as an increased incidence of premature births linked directly to heightened exposure to fine particulate matter and other industrial emissions.
Concluding her remarks at the recent press briefing, Goldman offered a direct critique of the current policy direction, asserting that the artificial intelligence industry’s aggressive race for corporate and national competitive advantage should never be treated as a matter of life or death for the surrounding communities, and that everyday families should not be forced to pay for the nation’s technological boom with their health.