A group of more than 800 former Environmental Protection Agency employees says the rapid buildout of artificial intelligence data centers could measurably worsen air pollution and public health at the same time federal regulators are loosening the rules meant to limit it. The warning came in a report released on September 10 by the Environmental Protection Network, a nonpartisan organization of former EPA scientists, toxicologists, engineers and policy analysts, many of whom spent decades inside the agency.
Who is speaking matters here. These are former career regulators, including people who wrote and enforced the pollution rules now under review. The report identifies at least 30 federal actions taken since January 2025 that the group argues raise pollution-related health risk, weaken safeguards or make enforcement harder. Seventeen of the 30 explicitly cite or target AI or data centers.
