Hyperscale data centers are being built across America at extraordinary speed, often close to homes, schools, farms, and existing communities, yet the federal public-health establishment appears remarkably uninterested in systematically studying the health risks for the people who must live beside them.
The potential exposures are obvious enough to warrant investigation: banks of diesel generators emit PM2.5, nitrogen oxides, and hazardous air pollutants; cooling systems, fans, transformers, and generators create persistent noise; enormous water requirements can stress municipal supplies and groundwater; and the massive electricity demand requires additional generation and transmission infrastructure.
Yet despite HHS now explicitly declaring that identifying environmental drivers of chronic disease is a priority, I can find no major HHS or NIH epidemiological program specifically following populations living near hyperscale data centers and comparing respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, sleep disturbance, childhood health, cancer, or other outcomes with suitable control populations.
Meanwhile, the EPA is focused on streamlining Clean Air Act reviews and removing impediments to construction.
In other words, Washington is facilitating one of the largest industrial infrastructure build-outs in modern American history before it has conducted the epidemiological surveillance necessary to determine what that build-out may be doing to the health of the Americans living next door.
That is precisely backward.
If HHS is serious about identifying environmental causes of chronic disease, hyperscale data-center communities should already be under active study.
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