Former EPA Officials Warn Data Center Deregulation Could Cost 1,300 Lives a Year

A coalition of former US Environmental Protection Agency officials says the Trump administration has taken more than 30 federal actions since January 2025 that weaken pollution safeguards in ways that could raise health risks as AI data centers expand, a finding that sits directly at odds with the deregulatory approach EPA’s current leadership has pursued as part of its data center strategy.

The Environmental Protection Network (EPN), a nonprofit made up of current and former EPA staff and leadership, published the findings on Thursday in a report titled “The Hidden Health Costs of AI Data Centers.” The Verge first reported on the release. Of the 30 federal actions the group catalogued, 17 specifically mention AI or target data centers, while the rest reshape the broader rules governing power plant emissions, pollution permitting, and enforcement that indirectly affect the facilities.

“This massive AI buildout can have enormous consequences for America’s health,” Dr. Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator, said at a media briefing on the report’s release. “At the very same time, EPA is touting its efforts to weaken or reconsider safeguards designed to protect people from harmful pollution.”

The report leans on a 2026 study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside, and the California Institute of Technology, who said they used health-cost estimation methods drawn from EPA’s own approach to power-plant and diesel-generator pollution. The study projected that pollution linked to data centers could impose $11.7 billion to $20.9 billion in annual public health costs by 2028. Under what the researchers call a rapid-development scenario, they estimated roughly 600,000 additional asthma symptom cases and about 1,300 premature deaths annually by that year, with the costs falling hardest on lower-income communities, which the study said could see per-household health costs up to 200 times higher than other areas.

EPN points to specific policy changes to make its case. In July 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14318, directing federal agencies to fast-track permitting for data center projects that require more than 100 megawatts of new electricity load, along with the natural gas turbines, coal plants, and other generation equipment built to serve them. More recently, EPA has proposed eliminating a 50-year-old Clean Air Act requirement that states give the public notice and a chance to comment on permits for “minor” industrial pollution sources, a category many data centers and their on-site generators fall into. “This proposed rule could force states whose laws forbid being stricter than federal rules to strip away public notice rights entirely, creating an unlevel playing field,” former EPA deputy director Mike Koerber wrote in EPN’s formal comments opposing the change.

EPA has also concluded that power plants built solely to serve a single data center, rather than to sell electricity onto the public grid, are not “electric utilities” and therefore fall outside the Acid Rain Program, the cap-and-trade system that has cut sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions from US power plants by roughly 90 percent since the Clean Air Act created it in 1990. Nearly 60 of these “islanded” plants are being built or already operating. EPA Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation Aaron Szabo called the exemption one of the president’s “commonsense approaches to regulating,” saying it helps “maintain our artificial intelligence dominance.” EPN’s report separately cites moves to narrow environmental reviews for already-approved projects and to curb citizen-led pollution lawsuits. “Public involvement in decision making is not just red tape,” said Walter Mugdan, a former EPA deputy regional administrator who spent 48 years at the agency, according to the Louisiana Illuminator. “People are showing up at data center meetings because they want, and they deserve, a voice in the decisions that affect where they live and what they breathe.”

EPN is calling on the administration to adopt what it calls a “Data Center Health Protection Pledge,” modeled on the White House’s own Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which nearly 200 companies and utilities, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, have committed to covering the cost of new power infrastructure rather than passing it on to household electricity bills. The report’s authors want a parallel public commitment focused on health rather than cost, including requiring power plants that supply data centers to control their pollution, properly permitting on-site generation, and rebuilding EPA’s enforcement staff.

EPA has not directly rebutted the EPN report, but Administrator Lee Zeldin has repeatedly framed his deregulatory agenda as central to making the US, in his words, “the AI capital of the world.” Zeldin has said EPA will not set nationwide environmental standards for data centers, arguing states and local governments are better positioned to decide what is appropriate for their own communities, and has pointed to the Ratepayer Protection Pledge and industry moves toward closed-loop cooling systems that draw less on local water supplies as evidence the administration is addressing the buildout’s downsides. EPN counters that the agency responsible for enforcing existing pollution law has itself lost roughly a quarter of its workforce, down from more than 16,000 employees before January 2025, leaving fewer inspectors to catch violations no matter what commitments companies make.