Background

The East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment on February 3rd, 2023, resulted in the exposure of residents and the surrounding area to numerous hazardous chemicals, which included known acute irritants and human carcinogens. Despite evacuation and cleanup, both residents and responders reported high occurrences of symptoms associated with exposure in the months following, such as eye, skin, and respiratory irritation, headaches, and fatigue. The long-term health consequences for residents remain uncertain.

Objective

To assess the potential for immune perturbations resulting from the exposure, we performed a broad investigation of circulating immune cells and mediators from residents of East Palestine, OH, 5 months following the derailment.

Methods

We performed exploratory immunophenotyping via flow cytometry and immune mediator profiling via Luminex on peripheral blood mononuclear cells and plasma collected from 19 participants who resided within an approximately one-mile radius of the derailment. These results were compared to sex and age-matched controls from an unexposed location.

Results

Immunophenotyping of East Palestine residents revealed decreased overall proportions of T and B lymphocytes and a shift towards memory subsets. Natural killer cell percentages were increased, particularly the cytotoxic CD56dim subset. Cytokine assays demonstrated heightened levels of cytokines and growth factors associated with hematopoietic differentiation and tissue repair.

Significance

Collectively, our observations demonstrate potential immunomodulation indicative of a response to an inflammatory insult within this cohort of exposed participants. This investigation indicates the necessity of expanded retrospective studies to continue immune monitoring of residents for evaluation of long-term health impacts.

Impact

This study evaluates immune perturbations in East Palestine, OH, residents five months after the February 3rd, 2023, train derailment, revealing altered lymphocyte frequencies, increased cytotoxic NK cells, and elevated cytokines linked to regulation of hematopoiesis and tissue repair. Findings suggest persistent immunomodulation consistent with prior inflammatory exposure and underscore the need for expanded long-term immune monitoring to understand potential chronic health effects in this exposed community.

As data center development grows at an unprecedented rate in the race to scale AI, so has their energy consumption and need for backup power. Energy consumption from data centers in the U.S. nearly tripled from 76 TWh in 2018 to ~200 TWh in 2024. Over the same period, diesel generator capacity at data centers in the U.S. also nearly tripled from an estimated 20 GW to 55 GW. In Oregon, data centers have 6 GW in permitted and proposed diesel generators, which is double the average power usage of all the homes in the state. Over 10,500 generator units have been permitted for data centers in Virginia as of the end of 2025, with a total capacity of 27 GW. This capacity is equivalent to the power consumption of over 20 million U.S. homes; Virginia has less than 4 million homes. Even if used exclusively for emergency backup power, this quantity of diesel generators could create significant exposure to harmful air pollution, particularly in areas with many large data centers. But as surging data center electricity demand outpaces supply, the grid becomes increasingly stressed, and developers prioritize speed at all costs, the potential for diesel generators to be used more regularly grows. Already, federal and state policies promote diesel generators for demand response, while industry markets them for non-emergency use. This shift is particularly concerning in an era of deregulation and weakened environmental and public health protections. This report was prepared in response to questions we’ve received from communities, state and local governments, and Tribes about the impacts of diesel generators and ways to limit harm. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive overview of how and why diesel generators are deployed for data centers, what the impacts can be, and some key ways to eliminate or minimize harm. We recognize that diesel generators are only one of many causes of data centers impacts—this narrow focus is not intended to de-emphasize other critical topics, including water use, energy use, bill impacts, land use, jobs, economics, and more. BDCP believes communities have a right to determine if and how data centers are developed and powered, and that everyone deserves clean air and water, healthy and comfortable surroundings, a sustainable local economy, and a stable climate.

This is the critical decade for steelmakers to position themselves for near-zero-emissions steel. What we should be seeing is investment decisions that lead to the phase-out of coal-based production, and the scaling up of green iron and renewable energy. Assessing progress has been difficult so far, but now there is a reliable way to judge decarbonisation progress by steelmakers across geographies.

Data centers, the backbone of the digital economy, are rapidly expanding globally to meet surging demand, yet this growth brings underappreciated risks to human health. They consumed 1.5% of global electricity in 2024 and are expected to represent nearly 10% of the electricity demand growth from 2024 to 2030 [1]. Despite efforts to curb their carbon and water footprints, the public health implications of data center expansion remain largely overlooked.

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence (AI) technology industry has driven a massive increase in electricity demand to power AI data centers. Many of these centers are building or planning to build on-site fossil fuel-driven power plants to alleviate strain on the local energy grid. Michael Cork—who earned a PhD in biostatistics at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in December 2025 and is now a postdoctoral researcher—has conducted analyses showing that air pollution from these new power sources could have serious health and economic impacts.

As surging data center electricity demand outpaces supply, the grid becomes increasingly stressed, and developers prioritize speed at all costs, the potential for diesel generators to be used more regularly grows. This report was prepared in response to questions we’ve received from communities, state and local governments, and Tribes about the impacts of diesel generators and ways to limit harm.

The Making the Case for Zero-Emission Solutions in Freight brief is a working document that centers community knowledge and expertise and identifies local solutions that call for community, industry, labor, government, and political action with the goal of advancing equity, environmental justice, and a zero emissions focused just transition.

Data centers built to power AI produce so much heat that they can raise the surface temperature of the land around them by several degrees—creating so-called data center heat islands that may already be affecting up to 340 million people. Andrea Marinoni at the University of Cambridge saw that the amount of energy needed to run a data center had been steadily increasing of late and was likely to “explode” in the coming years, and set out to quantify the impact.

Pennsylvania has rapidly emerged as a national hub for data center and AI infrastructure development. In alignment with federal initiatives such as the Trump administration’s AI Action Plan, state lawmakers have advanced legislation aimed at accelerating AI infrastructure and energy investments and development. Together, these proposals reflect a broader effort — in states beyond Pennsylvania, as well as nationally — to reduce regulatory friction in order to accelerate large-scale infrastructure projects.

While lawmakers and industry leaders say these measures are necessary for economic development, innovation, and job creation, they contribute to the erosion of municipal authority, meaningful community participation, and public oversight. In this brief, Cella Sum and Maia Woluchem analyze the implications of proposed state preemption laws and argue that bypassing local governance and accountability harms communities. They offer an alternative framework that better aligns state-wide infrastructure goals with community needs, and that would enable community members and municipal leaders to meaningfully engage in the transformation of their localities.