Former EPA Officials Say Deregulation Is Turning the AI Boom Into a Public Health Crisis

Key points

• Former EPA officials catalogued 30 federal regulatory rollbacks since January 2025 that they say increase health risks tied to AI data center pollution.
• A study from UC Riverside, Caltech and the Rochester Institute of Technology estimates AI-related air pollution could cause up to 1,300 premature deaths and more than $20 billion in public health costs by 2028.
• Trump's AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, recommends cutting rules under the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act and Superfund law to speed up permits for data centers and chip factories.
• Of the 30 policy changes flagged, 17 specifically mention AI or target data centers directly.
• The group is urging the White House to adopt a "Data Center Health Protection Pledge" requiring the EPA to track and publish pollution data from the AI buildout.

AI data centers consume enormous amounts of electricity, and right now most of that electricity comes from burning fossil fuels. A group of former US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials is warning that the Trump administration is actively removing the rules that would limit the resulting harm.

The group, the Environmental Protection Network, published a report this week cataloguing 30 federal actions taken since January 2025 that they say make the problem worse. Seventeen directly mention AI or data centers. On 28 August AI2Day reported that a proposed rule change would strip the federal requirement for public notice before data centers receive pollution permits, one of the clearest examples of what the EPN is now documenting at scale.

What is the government actually doing?

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has stated his goal of making America "the AI capital of the world" through deregulation. Since January 2025 the agency has rolled back dozens of pollution standards, cut staff and reduced its budget.

Trump's AI Action Plan, released in July 2025, goes further. It recommends loosening rules under the Clean Air Act (which limits air pollution), the Clean Water Act (which sets standards for waterways) and Superfund law (which governs cleanup of contaminated sites). The stated aim is faster permitting for data centers and chip factories.

The administration has also moved to curtail renewable energy projects, which means new data centers are more likely to run on gas and coal. That matters because it is the power infrastructure around data centers, not just the buildings themselves, that drives most of the emissions.

Does this affect people who don't live near a data center?

Directly, yes. Gas turbines and coal generators send particles and chemicals into the air that travel with the wind, sometimes for hundreds of miles. Chip factories, seeing a revival because of surging demand for AI processors, produce "forever chemicals," substances that don't break down in the environment or in the human body, and those spread far from where they are made.

"You do not need to be near a data center to be affected, because the pollution doesn't just come from the data centers themselves," said Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator, at a briefing this week. Goldman's full quote is worth sitting with: "You would think that an industry buildout of this magnitude, billed as a revolution, would mean more vigilance from EPA. Instead, EPA is doing just the opposite."

A study from UC Riverside, Caltech and the Rochester Institute of Technology found AI-related air pollution could lead to up to 1,300 premature deaths and more than $20 billion in public health costs by 2028. The EPN says that figure could climb further given the recent rollbacks.

What does the EPA say?

EPA spokesperson Cora Mandy told The Verge the agency "returned regulations to the best reading of the Clean Air Act after years of overreach by previous administrations" and remains committed to protecting human health while prioritising making America the AI capital of the world.

The EPN argues those two commitments are, as currently pursued, incompatible. The proposed "Data Center Health Protection Pledge" would require the EPA to track pollution from the AI buildout publicly. Marc Boom, EPN's senior director of public affairs, put the underlying point plainly at the briefing: "A more polluting AI buildout is not inevitable. It depends on the choices government makes now."

Whether this administration has any appetite for that kind of transparency is, at this point, the only open question.