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Data centers in Oregon might be helping to drive an increase in cancer and miscarriages
(www.theverge.com)
We just need to ban evaporative cooling for data centers.
this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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What the actual fuck? Was this written by the meat production/processing industry which is the actual cause of all those nitrates‽
There's no fucking way that a handful of Amazon data centers are using up enough water to increase nitrate concentrations. They're waaaaaaaay too small for that.
Think about it: If you evaporate that much water full of nitrates on copper/aluminum heat sinks what do you get? A thick ass film that ruins their effectiveness. Calcium/scale is much worse so what do data centers do? They preprocess and filter the water.
When you filter nitrates out of the water you end up with slime. What do you do with that slime? You throw it away. As in, in the trash. You don't flush it down the drain! That's a one-way ticket to clogged drains!
Some data centers can use a lot of water but not enough that it can make a dent in nitrate concentrations in a region that has been polluted by the meat processing industry for decades.
Amazon is a villain, yes! But they're not the correct villain for this issue.
If you go read the original Rolling Stones article it becomes much more clear how there was an original problem as you mention yes, but Amazon definitely exacerbated the issue. They explain more what's actually happening.
One industry is changing the numerator, one is changing the denominator. Each will blame the other. Neither are innocent. We don’t need to limit ourselves to one villain when there are so many worthy candidates.
They didn't bother maintaining water quality for the 35 years they knew it was a problem. Then when a company they were willing to sue got involved in the water cycle they decided it was worth testing.
that's nice of them to help out like that