Former EPA Officials Warn Trump’s AI Data Center Deregulation Poses Health Risks

At the start of Trump’s term, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin proclaimed his goal of making America “the AI capital of the world” through deregulation. Since then, Zeldin and the White House have rolled back dozens of rules on top of cutting staff and funding at the EPA, the former officials say.

The group warns that the deregulation spree and attacks on renewable energy mean the wave of new AI data centers is increasingly powered by dirty energy. They say this can affect Americans’ health even if they do not live near a data center, because pollution does not come only from the data centers themselves. New gas projects, on-site turbines, power plants built to serve tech companies, and the production of advanced chips can spread pollution far from the facilities they support.

Lynn Goldman, a pediatrician and former EPA assistant administrator, said at the briefing: “You would think that an industry buildout of this magnitude, billed as a revolution, would mean more vigilance from EPA.” She added: “Instead, EPA is doing just the opposite, thinking first about industry’s needs and weakening or reconsidering limits on toxic chemicals and harmful pollutants.”

The Environmental Protection Network report identifies 30 different federal actions since January 2025 that the group says exacerbate health risks stemming from data center pollution. Those include executive actions and proposals meant to curtail renewable energy projects while softening pollution regulations and exempting existing power plants and factories from certain standards. Of the 30 policy changes included in the report, 17 specifically mention AI or target data centers.

In July 2025, Trump released an “AI Action Plan” that recommended “streamlining or reducing regulations” under the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and Superfund law to expedite permitting for data center projects and chip factories. Tyson Slocum, energy program director at the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, told The Verge at the time that the plan was really about “using unprecedented emergency powers to grant massive new exemptions for data centers and specifically fossil fuel infrastructure.”

The report says Trump has essentially laid the policy groundwork for new gas projects to power energy-hungry data centers, ranging from turbines installed on-site to power plants built specifically to serve tech companies. Meanwhile, demand for advanced chips needed for generative AI is reviving the production of forever chemicals that do not break down easily and build up in the environment and human bodies.

“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,” Goldman said.

The new report cites a study from UC Riverside, Caltech, and the Rochester Institute of Technology that found air pollution associated with AI could lead to up to 1,300 premature deaths and more than $20 billion in public health costs by 2028. The toll could be even larger after factoring in the policy changes outlined in the Environmental Protection Network report, according to the organization. The U.S. can avoid those losses by restoring clean air and water standards, as well as rebuilding federal agencies’ capacity to enforce those rules, the EPA alumni argue.

Last year, hundreds of current EPA employees sent a public letter to Zeldin saying, “EPA under your leadership will not protect communities from hazardous chemicals and unsafe drinking water, but instead will increase risks to public health and safety.”

Marc Boom, the Environmental Protection Network’s senior director of public affairs, said in the briefing: “A more polluting AI buildout is not inevitable. It depends on the choices government makes now.” He said the EPA should be measuring how the buildout is changing pollution, who is being exposed, what it means for their health, and making all of that information public. “That is what a Data Center Health Protection Pledge should mean in practice,” he said.

The former EPA officials say the agency they once worked for, created to “protect human health and the environment,” is no longer the watchdog it should be as the physical infrastructure underpinning generative AI changes America’s landscape. They are urging Trump to adopt the pledge in what The Verge described as a perhaps futile effort.