An Amazon data center looms over single-family homes in July 2024 in Stone Ridge, Virginia. AI data centers require enormous amounts of energy that can harm air quality and pollute nearby waterways. The NAACP is sounding the alarm about the centers’ detrimental health impacts.
Photo by Nathan Howard, courtesy of Getty Images
“This raises concerns about respiratory problems, water pollution and infant mortality rates. Data centers exacerbate problems that already exist in communities.”
—Open’Conner
The NAACP has long been on the front lines of environmental justice and is addressing new threats as they emerge. One is AI data centers, huge campuses of warehouse-like buildings used to house and cool computing equipment that supports the country’s growing use of AI technology.
With increasing reliance on AI to meet everyday and professional needs, data centers run by companies such as Meta, Apple, Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services are projected to consume up to 12% of all US electricity by 2030. Google alone reported that its greenhouse gas emissions had increased by 48% in five years from 2024.
The NAACP is sounding alarms about the disproportionate impact of the centers, which are often located in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
In September, the organization published guiding principles on AI data centers, warning tech companies about their environmental harms and giving residents tools they can use to raise awareness and fight back.
Abre’ Conner, JD, director of the NAACP Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, spoke with The health of the nation about the health harms of AI data centers and how public health professionals can work to protect communities from harm.
What potential dangers do AI data centers pose to human health?
They carry with them a series of health problems. They use enough electricity to power a medium-sized city. They are testing water treatment plants and water infrastructure that could be used to ensure the people who live there have access to clean water. There are concerns about air quality. And they’re putting these AI data centers in places where infrastructure already exists.
It raises concerns about respiratory problems, water pollution and the infant mortality rate. Data centers exacerbate problems that already exist in communities. And so we have to talk about environmental health concerns with public health concerns, because they are highly correlated.
What’s interesting about this moment is that we’re also seeing this conversation expand to new places. It’s expanding into communities that haven’t necessarily organized in the past around environmental and climate justice issues. These are the same conversations that frontline communities have been trying to highlight for years.
Do the supposed benefits of AI data centers, such as jobs and better technology, outweigh the health risks?
In fact, we developed a set of community guiding principles that were informed by nearly 100 different groups, organizations, coalition partners, and allies. It was the first set of national guiding principles focused on environmental and climate justice for data center engagement.
A resident speaks at a public meeting in April 2025, in Memphis, Tennessee, about plans to open an AI data center nearby. Speakers were concerned about its environmental impact.
Photo by Brandon Dill, courtesy of The Washington Post/Getty Images
And one of the things that the community said was really important is that the jobs can’t justify the damage. The core problem is that jobs are used to justify environmental and climate damage within the community for decades and decades afterward.
And if people can’t breathe in their community, if people’s life expectancy is at stake, then the conversation really needs to be, “How do we do this in a way that allows people to continue to live their lives fully, so that they can reap the benefits of whatever so-called technology and innovation is supposed to come from this without them having to continue to bear the brunt of the damage when it comes to so-called innovation?” We do not want to repeat the practices of the past.
What else should people working in public health know about AI data centers?
A lot of people in the environmental and climate justice space have really good ideas that can also help build a strategy, rather than starting and reinventing the wheel.
The other way to work with people in public health is to create shared strategies. When there are meetings, when there are convenings, when there are strategy sessions, invite people from the environment and the climate justice space to those conversations.
That will help people understand how similar many of these conversations really are. But we are not changing strategies, we are not changing tactics; we may simply be changing the message so that it resonates with the audience looking at it through a particular lens.
What is the big picture when it comes to data centers?
We have to think about the broader ecosystem of our planet, because none of this will really matter if we don’t have a planet moving forward. So it’s not about relocating, but about finding a solution that will help us all in the future feel good about the decisions we make today.
For more information on the “Frontline Framework Community Data Center Guiding Principles” and other NAACP tools, visit bit.ly/naacpcenters.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
- Copyright The Nation’s Health, American Public Health Association
