Why Data Monsters Are Catastrophic for Our Children

Including communities that told data centers to f**k off and won and tips from the industry playbook

Really? We are in a battle for real food, clean air, unpolluted water, and now this…data monsters. Below, I examine why this is the next nightmare for children and how to be on the winning side.

In my humble pediatric opinion, this is the hill we must climb together. Once they are here, they will not be undone. In the following article, I will outline my research on how these childhood nightmares will ruin our children’s well-being, and are unable to be pulled back once they are assembled.

Take heart. There are many community wins and I’ve put together the plan to fight them based on what we learned from the Tobacco/Monsanto playbook. Tobacco was stopped. Monsanto/Bayer is 12 billion in the hole and will be stopped, too.

This is what I’ve learned…

Air Pollution: Diesel Generators and Fossil Fuel Backend

Fuel courage, not data centers.

Every data center has on-site diesel backup generators and they are massive ones. They test them regularly and run them during grid stress (I needed to look this one up: when demand for electricity pushes up against or exceeds what the grid can supply).

These emit:

• PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter): penetrates deep into lungs, crosses into the bloodstream. Linked to asthma, heart disease, and premature death.

• NOₓ (nitrogen oxides): respiratory irritant, contributes to ground-level ozone.

Air pollution is the leading environmental cause of death and disease in children globally, responsible for roughly 1 in 10 deaths of children under five, approximately 600,000 per year. No other environmental toxicant, not lead, not pesticides, not contaminated water, approaches that toll. Children breathe twice as much air per pound of body weight as adults, their lungs are still developing, and the damage is often permanent. When a data center's diesel generators and upstream power plants pump PM2.5 and NOₓ into the air, children are the population that pays the highest price.

One analysis of a single data center in Loudoun County, Virginia estimated $53–99 million per year in health damages from PM 2.5 alone, including 3.4–6.5 additional premature deaths annually. Over 30 years: 102–195 deaths. The highest exposure increases hit census tracts with elevated Social Vulnerability Index scores, meaning poorer communities and communities of color.

Modeling studies project that by the late 2020s, U.S. data centers could be responsible for roughly 1,300 premature deaths and up to 600,000 asthma symptom cases annually, with a public health burden approaching $20 billion per year.

Is anyone in the White House listening?

And that’s just the on-site generators. The electricity powering these facilities comes from fossil fuel plants (coal, gas, oil) that emit the same pollutants upstream. Data centers consumed over 4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with projections reaching 12% by 2028. Every server rack is a smokestack somewhere else.

Again, our children are the highest-risk group: developing lungs, higher respiration rates, and more time outdoors. PM 2.5 exposure in childhood is linked to:

• Development of asthma

• Reduced lung function and growth

• Increased respiratory infections

• Neurodevelopmental impacts

Noise Pollution: The 24/7 Hum That Never Stops

Cooling fans, pumps, HVAC systems, backup generators run 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. This isn’t occasional noise and it’s permanent. I’ve not been privy to hear these centers personally for which I am grateful, however, anecdotally people have shared with me the horror and physical discomfort of the noise.

The noise is often described as a constant low-frequency hum or high-pitched whine that travels farther than typical environmental sounds. Residents report hearing it 2 to 4.5 miles away in quiet rural areas. The low-frequency and infrasonic components (below ~20 Hz) aren’t always “heard” conventionally, but are experienced as pressure, vibration, and have a rumbling quality. They can penetrate walls and buildings more easily than higher-frequency noise.

And what about wildlife?

For children, chronic noise exposure above 55 dBA (EPA threshold) has been linked to:

• Poor school performance

• Decreased reading comprehension

• Concentration deficits

• Increased stress and behavioral issues

• Cognitive development impairment

The 24/7 nature of data center noise means there’s no respite and no quiet night for a child’s nervous system to recover. Sleep disturbance alone creates attention problems, emotional dysregulation, and academic decline. Studies on children in chronically noisy environments show persistent cognitive deficits.

EMF Exposure: New Power Lines, New Substations, New Risks

What the heck? Data centers require massive electrical infrastructure: high-voltage transmission lines, on-site substations, and industrial-grade transformers all of which generate electromagnetic fields.

The specific health effects of data center EMFs haven’t been studied because the infrastructure is so new, but the science on non-ionizing EMF exposure from power infrastructure is extensive and alarming:

• Childhood leukemia: consistently associated with magnetic field exposure above 3–4 milligauss (mG) in multiple pooled analyses

• Central nervous system tumors

• Brain cancer

• ADHD and cognitive dysfunction

• Oxidative stress, free radical formation, and DNA damage

• Miscarriage

The U.S. has no federal safety regulations protecting against chronic EMF exposure from power infrastructure. The levels that research flags as concerning are perfectly legal. Hundreds of scientists have called for risk mitigation measures.

Millions of parents must call for cessation, not mitigation.

When a data center goes in, it’s not just the building. It’s the new high-voltage corridor cutting across the landscape, the substation humming next to the elementary school, the transformer bank radiating 24/7. Children’s developing nervous systems and rapidly dividing cells make them more vulnerable to EMF effects than adults. Anxiety-related disorders will skyrocket. If the goal is to keep us all chronically ill, then this plan is perfect.

Water Theft: Aquifers Drained While Kids Are Told to Stop Running Under Sprinklers

This is where the rubber meets the rage. Sword to pen. The absurdity astounds.

In Fayetteville, Georgia, a QTS data center secretly consumed nearly 30 million gallons of water before receiving a bill. Residents had been complaining of low water pressure. Imagine that the county had told residents to stop watering their lawns during a drought. Meanwhile, the data center was the number one water consumer in the county hooked up through connections the utility didn’t even know about, in one case.

Don’t let your children drink water! It is needed by the Data Center!

In The Dalles, Oregon (population 16,000), Google’s data centers consumed 355 million gallons in 2021 which is ~ a quarter of the city’s total water supply. Google then funded the city’s lawsuit against a local newspaper that tried to obtain those figures through a public records request, arguing the data was a trade secret.

In Utah, the Stratos project would require 16.6 billion gallons per year tapping water sources that feed the Great Salt Lake, which is approaching record-low levels and whose drying lakebed is already producing toxic dust storms.

In Florida, where 90% of residents rely on groundwater, data center proposals are threatening the Floridan Aquifer. The Polk Regional Water Cooperative projects a 96 million-gallon-per-day deficit within 10–15 years. The state’s springs are collapsing; 80% of Florida’s 1,115 documented springs are already impaired.

U.S. data centers directly consumed 17.4 billion gallons of water in 2023, projected to hit 38–73 billion gallons by 2028. In Texas alone, data center water use could reach 399 billion gallons by 2030 which is equivalent to drawing down Lake Mead by more than 16 feet in a single year.

A medium-sized data center consumes roughly 110 million gallons per year equivalent to about 1,000 households’ worth. Larger facilities hit 5 million gallons per day.

The data center gets the water, residents get water restrictions, and children grow up in a place where the aquifer is being mined out from under them for someone else’s AI training run. This is insanity.

The Playbook: How Normal People are Killing Billion Dollar Data Center Projects

The most important thing for all of us to comprehend is that these companies have never lost a fight that they weren’t forced to have in public. Their entire strategy depends on backroom deals, rushed approvals before people are out of bed, and the assumption that regular people are too disorganized/exhausted/distracted to fight back. Every single win on board proves that assumption to be false.

The Coalition: Who Is Actually Stopping the Monsters?

The single most important lesson I am learning from reading about victories is that data centers lose when a room full of people who normally don’t agree on anything stand together. This is a political problem for them and a uniting force for us. Here are the people you need in the room.

Phase One: The Farmers and Legacy Landowners

In South Annville Township, Pennsylvania, multigenerational farming families stood shoulder to shoulder with Gen Z climate activists. In Millville, New Jersey, the coalition that killed the largest data center proposal in state history was built on exactly this alliance…“young people and long-time farmers working together to stop Big Tech from taking advantage of our community,” as CRAN ecology director Kayleigh Henry put it.

Farmers bring something no one else can: generational credibility. When a family that’s worked the same land for a century tells the zoning board this project will destroy what they’ve built, it lands differently than any activist ever could. They also understand water and land use at a ground level that makes developers’ consultants look foolish under cross-examination.

The Retirees With Time and Institutional Knowledge

Michael Schroeder, the retired history professor who led the South Annville fight, filed a Right-to-Know request the moment he heard about the proposal. He organized yard signs, t-shirts, letter-writing campaigns, and a public protest. His coalition gathered 500 petition signatures in one month, roughly 1 in 5 adults in the township. “Given more time,” Schroeder said, “we probably could have got three quarters of the adults in the township.”

Retirees are the backbone of these fights. They have time to attend daytime meetings, decades of experience navigating bureaucracy, and they’re not intimidated by lawyers in suits. They’ve seen bullshit before.

The Gen Z Organizers

The Climate Revolution Action Network (CRAN) didn’t just show up to meetings. They spent months holding public workshops, training residents to speak at civic meetings, and mobilizing hundreds of people to pack municipal chambers. They taught ordinary people how zoning works, how public comment periods function, and how to craft testimony that commissioners can’t ignore.

Young organizers bring energy, social media fluency, and a willingness to do the tiresome work of going door-to-door that wins fights. They also bring moral clarity; when a 17-year-old high school student tells a room full of 60-year-old commissioners that they’re mortgaging her future for server racks, the optics are profound. They can also navigate the virtual world like no one’s business.

Your Children: Literally Bring Them

This is not symbolic. This is strategy.

When a child stands at the podium during public comment and asks why grown-ups are choosing a data center’s diesel generators over their lungs, the meeting changes. Commissioners who can stonewall adults crumble when a kid asks simple questions. The health impacts of data centers fall disproportionately on children; developing lungs breathing PM 2.5, developing brains trying to learn through chronic low-frequency noise, developing bodies exposed to EMF from new high-voltage infrastructure.

Children are the most affected demographic and the most morally unassailable messengers.

Bring them to every meeting. Let them speak if they want to. If they don’t want to speak, let them be seen. A packed room with kids sitting in the front row sends a message that no paid lobbyist can counter.

The literature is unambiguous about what data centers do to children:

• Chronic noise exposure above 55 dBA is linked to poor school performance, decreased reading comprehension, concentration deficits, and increased behavioral issues in children

• PM 2.5 exposure in childhood is associated with asthma development, reduced lung function growth, and neurodevelopmental impacts

• EMF exposure from high-voltage power infrastructure has been linked to childhood leukemia in multiple pooled analyses, with elevated risk consistently observed above 3–4 milligauss

• The infrasound and low-frequency noise from 24/7 cooling operations penetrates walls and children’s nervous systems get no recovery time, and sleep disturbance cascades into attention problems, emotional dysregulation, and measurable cognitive deficits

Your kids aren’t props. They’re the actual stakeholders. Put them in front of the people making the decision.

The Veterans

In East Vincent Township, Pennsylvania, the proposed 1.9 million square-foot data center was sited near the Southeastern Veterans Center. The veterans and their families showed up. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to deny.

Veterans command automatic respect in municipal settings. They also understand something most civilians don’t: infrastructure is a national security issue. A veteran explaining that data centers filled with Chinese-manufactured components (more on this below) are situated near their facilities, people will pay attention.

The Environmentalists With Specific Expertise

In South Annville, the proposed site included farmland that was home to bald eagle nests. That’s a legal lever as much as an emotional one. But you don’t need eagles; you need people who understand:

• Hydrology — someone who can explain what drawing millions of gallons from the local aquifer actually does to residential wells

• Air quality — someone who can translate PM 2.5 micrograms per cubic meter into asthma cases and premature deaths

• Noise science — someone who can explain why a facility’s decibel readings at the property line mean nothing when low-frequency sound travels two to four miles through the ground

• EMF measurement — someone with a gaussmeter who can demonstrate what the new substation and transmission lines will actually produce at the nearest homes and schools

• Environmentalists — someone who can explain the impact on wildlife and threatened species.

The Property Rights Advocates

James Clifton, the Georgia attorney and property rights advocate running for Fayette County Board of Commissioners, obtained the utility’s letter showing QTS had consumed 30 million gallons without paying and posted it on Facebook. That single public records request turned a local water issue into a national story.

Property rights concerns crosses political lines in ways that environmental language sometimes doesn’t. “They’re taking our water and our grid capacity and leaving us with the pollution” is a message that lands with libertarians, conservatives, and leftists simultaneously.

Phase Two: The Paper Trail: FOIA Everything

Every single victory started with a public records request. Before you organize a single meeting, file requests.

What to Request

DOCUMENT WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR

Water agreements and permits. How many gallons per day? From what source? At what rate? Who pays for infrastructure upgrades?

Tax abatement or incentive agreements. How much is the developer actually paying? Most of these deals involve massive property tax breaks; the community subsidizes the project, not the other way around.

Environmental impact assessments. If they exist, they’re probably inadequate. If they don’t exist, that’s your first demand.

Grid interconnection studies. What transmission upgrades are required? Who pays? Will residential rates increase?

Noise studies. Demand modeling for nighttime conditions and cumulative effects from multiple facilities, not just daytime single-source measurements.

Zoning and comprehensive plan documents. Is the project actually consistent with existing zoning, or are they asking for variances and rezonings?

Communications between developers and officials. Emails, meeting logs, phone records and follow the backroom trail.

Equipment and supply chain documentation. Where are the servers, chips, networking equipment, and backup systems manufactured?

That Last One Is a Kill Shot

Here’s something the developers absolutely do not want discussed in public: a significant portion of data center hardware is manufactured in China by companies with documented ties to the People’s Liberation Army. Where did I hear about this? On X. You won’t learn about it on mainstream media.

Huawei, ZTE, Hikvision, and a range of other Chinese firms have been placed on the FCC’s Covered List because of their ties to Beijing and the Chinese military. Huawei equipment has been found in cell towers near U.S. military installations, and the FBI has recognized that Huawei gear has the capability to intercept commercial cell traffic, access restricted military airwaves, and disrupt strategic command communications.

The U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) issued formal guidance in May 2025 specifically warning that Chinese advanced-computing integrated circuits including Huawei Ascend 910B, 910C, and 910D chips are presumptively in violation of U.S. export controls. Any data center using these chips without BIS authorization could face “…substantial criminal and administrative penalties, up to and including imprisonment, fines, loss of export privileges, or other restrictions.”

BIS further warned that foreign data center providers could be added to the Entity List “even where there is no violation of the EAR” if they act “contrary to U.S. national security or foreign policy interests.”

Former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger described the situation bluntly: American data centers could become “remotely controlled islands of Chinese digital sovereignty” as the U.S. quietly builds “strategic vulnerabilities into our AI and energy backbone.”

The Trump administration has shelved key tech security measures including restrictions on sales of Chinese equipment for U.S. data centers prior to diplomatic meetings with Beijing. That means the regulatory backstop you might expect from the federal government does not exist. The equipment is flowing in, and local communities are the last line of defense.

When you demand equipment supply chain documentation through public records requests, you’re asking a question the developers cannot comfortably answer in a public hearing: “What percentage of the hardware in this facility was manufactured by Chinese companies under U.S. sanctions or on the FCC Covered List, and what due diligence has been performed to ensure compliance with BIS General Prohibition 10?”

A room full of residents asking about water is one problem for a developer. A room full of residents asking whether the proposed facility will be filled with Huawei chips that the U.S. government has flagged as national security threats is a completely different category of problem. It brings in a dimension, national security, that zoning boards and county commissions are not equipped to dismiss with a wave of the hand.

This also opens the door to involvement from federal lawmakers and national security-focused organizations that might otherwise stay out of a local zoning fight.

Phase Three: The Meeting: Pack the Room and Control the Narrative

This is where every win is born and sealed. The formula is consistent across every victory:

1. Pack the Room With Bodies

Not Zoom comments. Not written submissions. Physical bodies in physical seats. In New Brunswick, a “massive crowd” attended the public meeting and the city council removed data centers as a permitted use. In Andover Township, the turnout was so overwhelming the meeting was described as “chaotic” and “physical.” In Millville, CRAN packed municipal chambers with “hundreds of vocal opponents.”

Online comments can be ignored. A room full of your neighbors staring at a commissioner while they vote cannot.

2. Train Your Speakers

CRAN’s model is the gold standard: hold workshops before the meeting. Teach people how public comment works such as time limits, how to address the board, what kinds of arguments land, and what kinds get tuned out. Practice testimony. Make sure every speaker hits a different angle so the board hears a comprehensive case rather than repetition:

• Speaker 1: Water — aquifer depletion, the specific gallon numbers, the drought context, what happens to residential wells

• Speaker 2: Air quality — PM2.5, diesel generators, the asthma and premature death projections, the children’s health angle

• Speaker 3: Noise — the 24/7 low-frequency hum, sleep disturbance, cognitive impacts on kids, the fact that decibel limits don’t capture infrasound

• Speaker 4: EMF — the new substation, the transmission lines, the childhood leukemia research, the complete absence of federal safety standards

• Speaker 5: National security — Chinese-manufactured components, FCC Covered List, BIS General Prohibition 10, the Huawei/Ascend chip problem

• Speaker 6: Economics — tax abatements, who actually pays for grid upgrades, whether the “jobs” numbers hold up to scrutiny (spoiler: they don’t — a large data center might employ 10 people after construction)

• Speaker 7: The child — a young person explaining what it means to grow up next to this

• Speaker 8: The farmer or legacy landowner; generational stewardship, what the land and water mean, what’s being lost

3. Make Them Vote on the Record

The single most important tactical objective: force an on-the-record roll call vote. No voice votes. No “consent agendas.” No deferrals to staff. Every elected official must have their name attached to a yes or no that will follow them to their next election.

Legacy officials can get voted out: Cassidy.

In Millville, the vote was to ban data centers entirely. In East Vincent, it was a unanimous denial of a conditional use application. In Pemberton Township, it was an ordinance prohibiting construction and operation outright. In Andover Township, officials are now considering an ordinance to ban data centers in all locations throughout the township which is a direct result of public pressure.

The specific mechanism matters less than the public record. Once an official votes yes on a data center after hearing all of the above testimony, they own every asthma case, every dry well, and every sleepless night that follows.

4. Record Everything

Bring cameras. Livestream the meeting. Post the footage. When the Sussex Visibility Brigade in Andover described the officials’ behavior as a “political clown show” and said “we dragged them to this decision,” they were documenting the entire process publicly. Officials behave differently when they know the footage will be online within hours.

Phase Four: The Legal Leverage: Sue If You Have To

My least favorite recourse, and unfortunately, the American way: the lawsuit. The Sussex Visibility Brigade in Andover made it explicit: “If we had to guess, it was the public pressure and impending lawsuit that made them capitulate.”

You don’t necessarily need to file. The threat of litigation credibly communicated makes for local governments to sit up and take notice. Municipalities are risk-averse. They don’t want to spend taxpayer money defending lawsuits. If you can demonstrate that the approval process was rushed, not transparent, or failed to comply with environmental review requirements, you have leverage.

In Utah, nearly 4,000 residents filed formal protests with the Division of Water Rights against the Stratos data center’s water application spending roughly $60,000 on filing fees ($15 per protest). The application was withdrawn. The developer says they’ll refile, but the administrative burden and public opposition have already delayed the project and forced them to restart the process.

Phase Five: Go Statewide: Moratoriums, Not Just Project Denials

CRAN is now pushing New Jersey lawmakers for a statewide moratorium on new data center construction. Pennsylvania State Senator Katie Muth has announced plans to file a three-year moratorium bill. Food & Water Watch became the first national group to call for a data center moratorium, and over 250 organizations have since joined the call including 17 from Pennsylvania alone.

Winning one project denial is a battle. A statewide moratorium is the war. The argument is simple: if local governments have to fight these one at a time while developers have unlimited resources to submit unlimited proposals, the communities will eventually lose through exhaustion. A moratorium levels the playing field and forces a comprehensive assessment of cumulative impacts: water, grid, air quality, noise, EMF, national security before any more projects are approved.

The moratorium demand also shifts the political burden. Instead of defending a specific project, elected officials have to explain why they oppose studying the cumulative impacts before approving more facilities. That’s a much harder position to hold in public.

The Coalition Checklist

Before you walk into that first meeting, you need:

• Farmers and legacy landowners — generational credibility, water expertise

• Retirees — time, institutional knowledge, FOIA skills

• Gen Z organizers — energy, social media, workshop infrastructure

• Children — the actual stakeholders, the moral messengers

• Veterans — automatic respect, national security framing

• Subject matter experts — hydrology, air quality, noise, EMF, health

• Property rights advocates — cross-ideological appeal

• An attorney or legal team — credible threat of litigation

• A FOIA strategy — water agreements, tax deals, environmental assessments, equipment supply chains

• A statewide contact — someone connected to the moratorium push

What Doesn’t Work

• Waiting for state or federal government to save you. The Trump administration shelved restrictions on Chinese data center equipment. The cavalry isn’t coming. You are the cavalry.

• Online petitions alone. Signatures are useful for demonstrating breadth of opposition, but they don’t replace bodies in seats at the meeting where the vote happens.

• Focusing exclusively on climate arguments. Climate is important, but it doesn’t mobilize the full coalition. Water, health, property rights, and national security bring in people who tune out climate messaging.

• Being polite to the point of invisibility. The Andover Township fight got heated enough to make the news. The Sussex Visibility Brigade called officials’ behavior a “political clown show” publicly. You don’t need to be rude, but you do need to be unignorable.

• Accepting “we’ll study it” as a win. Studies are where projects go to get approved quietly later. Demand votes. Demand moratoriums. Demand decisions.

The through-line in every victory is the same: ordinary people who refused to accept that a server farm mattered more than their children’s lungs, their water supply, and their community’s future. The developers have money. You have numbers, moral clarity, and the truth about what these facilities actually do to the people who live near them.

Money beats almost everything in American politics except a packed room full of people who aren’t leaving until the vote is recorded.

Please support my work on Substack as a paid subscriber and/or my website, gmoscience.org, a 501c3 nonprofit. I spent my weekend researching and writing this article. Why? Your kids and mine.

References

1. https://www.who.int/news/item/29-10-2018-more-than-90-of-the-worlds-children-breathe-toxic-air-every-day

2. https://www.stateofglobalair.org/hap/impacts-on-children

3. https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution

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13. https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/air-pollution-and-the-public-health-costs-of-ai

14. https://loudounclimate.org/data-centers

15. https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-ai-data-center-air-pollution

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18. https://envirodatagov.org/communities-close-to-epa-regulated-data-centers-face-heightened-air-pollution