From the US Food & Water Watch:
Toxic Mixture: Data Centers Turn to PFAS For Cooling.
As if we didn’t need another reason to pump the brakes on Big Tech’s data center fever dreams… Our research team just took a deep dive into how data centers are turning to toxic PFAS “forever chemicals” for liquid cooling.
Data centers’ rapidly expanding land, water, and electricity footprints are fueling growing backlash, with as many as seven in ten Americans saying they wouldn’t want a data center in their community. In response to this intense public opposition, many data centers have promised technological fixes in the form of novel liquid cooling systems. While liquid cooling systems may reduce—but not eliminate—data center water use, they often rely on dangerous per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which are highly toxic, lab-made chemicals that persist in the environment and harm many systems of the human body. Data centers are poised to increase the use of these “forever chemicals” just as some other industries are phasing them out. The data center industry already relies on PFAS and similar compounds for chip manufacturing and is now turning to the same industry that produced fracking fluids to cool its data centers.
