Advocates raise alarm over PFAS pollution from datacenters amid AI boom

By The Guardian | The Guardian | October 9, 2025

Read the full article by Tom Perkins (The Guardian)

“Datacenters’ electricity demands have been accused of delaying the US’s transition to clean energy and requiring fossil fuel plants to stay online, while their high level of water consumption has also raised alarm. Now public health advocates fear another environmental problem could be linked to them – Pfas ‘forever chemical’ pollution.

Big tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Amazon often need datacenters to store servers and networking equipment that process the world’s digital traffic, and the artificial intelligence boom is driving demand for more facilities.

Advocates are particularly concerned over the facilities’ use of Pfas gas, or f-gas, which can be potent greenhouse gases, and may mean datacenters’ climate impact is worse than previously thought. Other f-gases turn into a type of dangerous compound that is rapidly accumulating across the globe.” …

This content provided by the PFAS Project.