Death by AI data centers

Death by AI data centers


Dorothy Slater writes:

My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a cool washcloth on her neck. “It’s OK,” I say. “It will pass. I’m here with you. I’ll be right back with an anti-nausea medicine. You don’t even have to swallow it. I can push it through your IV.”

I walk out of the room, always quickly, because there are a dozen other things to do. I try to pull her medicine from the electronic dispenser without anyone interrupting me. I don’t want to let my patient wait. I make it back to the room, draw it up in a syringe, and flush it into her body, slowly now, because pushing it too quickly can cause heart dysrhythmias.

I look up at the television in her room and see a commercial from Meta, spotlighting people in small-town Louisiana who are seemingly thrilled to have one of the world’s largest data centers built in their neighborhood, so thankful for the jobs it will apparently bring. I look back at my patient, who is stuck here in the hospital with cancer, as rage rises inside me.

I am an oncology nurse in “Cancer Alley,” the gorgeous, haunted eighty-five-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This section of the river alone is stuffed with around 200 oil, gas, and petrochemical operations, making up 25 percent of U.S. petrochemical processing. The chemicals involved in the industry are deadly: Almost every census tract on this stretch ranks among the top 5 percent for cancer risk from toxic air pollution, over forty-seven times what the federal government has deemed acceptable and, in some places, seven times the national average. Already at the frontlines of the cancer-causing petrochemical industry, Louisiana now faces a new wave of AI data center development and, with it, new sources of pollution. Across the United States, these data centers are mostly powered by gas or coal. Meta’s proposed $200 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, is no different. To support the energy requirements, one utility company, Entergy Louisiana, plans to build ten new gas-fired power plants.

Tech companies like Meta want us to believe that the AI boom is inevitable, and we all might as well get on board. But I’m a nurse, and my job is to advocate for my patients. Even without these new data centers, Louisiana has seen enough death and destruction. [Continue reading…]

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