By Grace Kistner RN, DTN, MMHA, BSBA, BSN, CCRN, CSSLHPM | ICCA Chair of Membership & Recruitment
Across Illinois, communities are seeing a rapid rise in proposed data centers to support artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and other digital services. These facilities may bring economic investment, but they can also require enormous amounts of electricity, water, land, and infrastructure. For clinicians and public-health professionals, the central question is simple: How can this growth occur without creating avoidable health burdens for surrounding communities?
Air pollution: Many data centers rely on diesel generators for backup power and routine testing. Diesel exhaust contains fine particulate matter and nitrogen oxides, pollutants associated with asthma, respiratory illness, cardiovascular disease, and premature death. These risks matter most when additional pollution is introduced into communities already affected by highways, industrial facilities, warehouses, power plants, or other sources. Environmental health is cumulative. A new source of pollution does not exist separately from everything residents are already exposed to.
Energy demand and climate: Large data centers can consume extraordinary amounts of electricity. How that electricity is generated matters for health. If new demand leads to increased use of fossil-fuel power plants, the resulting air pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions can affect communities far beyond the data center itself. Cleaner energy, greater efficiency, and careful grid planning can reduce those impacts.
Water use: Some data centers also require significant amounts of water for cooling. Communities deserve clear information about how much water a proposed facility may use, where it will come from, how demand may change during periods of extreme heat or drought, and whether other local water needs could be affected. Access to reliable, safe water is itself a public-health issue.
Environmental justice and community participation: Health impacts are not distributed equally. Communities already carrying disproportionate environmental burdens may be more vulnerable to additional pollution, infrastructure, noise, traffic, or resource demands. Environmental justice therefore includes both reducing cumulative exposures and ensuring that residents have meaningful access to information and decision-making.
What can individuals and communities do?
Illinois is currently considering ways to create clearer standards for data-center development. One proposal, the Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers Act, or POWER Act, includes measures related to pollution, water use, energy demand, ratepayer protections, and community transparency. Regardless of any single policy proposal, the underlying public-health principles are straightforward: data-center development should protect air and water, minimize climate pollution, avoid shifting unnecessary costs or risks onto communities, and meaningfully involve the people most affected.
Clinicians and community members can help by learning about proposed developments in their area, attending local planning or zoning meetings, asking developers and officials about air emissions, energy sources, water use, and cumulative impacts, and sharing reliable health information with neighbors and community organizations. Another option is to contact state and local policymakers to share public-health concerns and ask how proposed safeguards, including measures contained in the POWER Act, address those issues.
Technology and public health do not have to be competing priorities. As Illinois builds the infrastructure needed for a rapidly changing digital economy, health should be treated as part of the planning process from the beginning—not something communities have to address after development is already underway.