The miscarriages started showing up in clusters. Not everywhere, just in certain neighborhoods, certain well systems. Then the cancers. Rare ones. The kind doctors don’t expect to see concentrated in a single county. People started comparing notes: chronic fatigue that wouldn’t lift, kidney problems in otherwise healthy adults, children with respiratory issues that seemed to come out of nowhere.
In Morrow County, Oregon, residents began connecting these patterns to something most people never think about: the massive data center that had moved into their community. Officials tested 70 wells. Sixty-eight came back with nitrate levels above federal safety thresholds. When they visited the first 30 homes, they documented at least 25 miscarriages and six people who’d had kidneys removed.
Now, central Ohio residents are asking: Could the same thing be happening here?
The Invisible Infrastructure
Central Ohio has become one of the nation’s densest data center regions. There are 133 facilities across the area, more than half of Ohio’s total, with 28 Amazon data centers alone concentrated near New Albany, Hilliard, and Dublin. These aren’t small operations. A single data center can use millions of gallons of water per day for cooling systems, drawing from the same groundwater supplies that flow into residential wells and municipal water systems.
Most people have no idea these facilities exist in their neighborhoods. They’re designed to be inconspicuous, often resembling warehouses. But their environmental footprint is anything but subtle.
How Data Centers Enter Your Body
The health concerns work through two primary pathways: water and air.
Water contamination happens through a mechanism that’s straightforward but often misunderstood. Data centers don’t add nitrates to water; they accelerate existing contamination. Central Ohio’s agricultural legacy left nitrogen-based fertilizers in the soil. Under normal conditions, groundwater movement allows time for natural filtration. But when data centers pull massive volumes of water from underground aquifers, they create pressure changes that can cause nitrate-laden water to seep into the supply faster than it can be filtered.
Nitrates in drinking water interfere with oxygen transport in the blood. In pregnant women, this can lead to miscarriage or developmental problems. In children, it causes “blue baby syndrome,” where tissues don’t get enough oxygen. In adults, chronic exposure is linked to thyroid problems and certain cancers, particularly of the digestive system.
Air pollution adds another layer. A Caltech study found that data centers’ emissions are expected to contribute to 1,300 premature deaths annually in the U.S. by 2030, creating a public health burden approaching $20 billion. The facilities emit nitrogen oxides and particulate matter from backup diesel generators and cooling systems. These pollutants aggravate asthma, contribute to cardiovascular disease, and increase susceptibility to respiratory infections.
If someone in your household has persistent breathing problems that doctors attribute to “seasonal allergies” or “stress-induced asthma,” the data center three miles away may be a variable no one has checked.
The Symptoms No One Connects
This is where environmental health impacts become invisible. A woman has a miscarriage and is told it’s common, just bad luck. A man in his forties develops kidney problems and doctors point to diet or genetics. A child’s asthma gets worse every year and parents are advised to reduce household allergens.
These explanations aren’t wrong; they’re incomplete. Location is almost never part of the diagnostic conversation. Doctors don’t typically ask: “What’s the industrial infrastructure near your home? Where does your water come from? Are there new facilities that have opened in your area in the past five years?”
The Ohio EPA’s Central Ohio Regional Water Study shows correlation between areas with the worst water quality and data center concentrations, though officials say there isn’t enough data yet for definitive causation. That phrase, “not enough data,” is common in environmental health. It often means the monitoring hasn’t been done, not that the risk isn’t real.
The Regulatory Gap
Ohio is currently considering a new permit specifically for data centers that discharge wastewater and stormwater. The draft permit would allow facilities to release certain wastewater with fewer pollutants into nearby water sources. Notably, the list of banned pollutants does not include nitrates.
The permit’s language is revealing: it states that “a lowering of water quality of various waters of the state is necessary to accommodate important social and economic development.” This is the calculus being made: water quality traded for economic growth, with the assumption that the health costs will remain diffuse enough to avoid accountability.
Amazon disputes any connection between its facilities and health problems, calling recent reports “misleading and inaccurate.” The company notes that data centers draw from the same water supply as everyone else and that nitrates come from agricultural sources, not data center operations. This is technically true. But it sidesteps the question of whether the facilities’ water demands are accelerating the movement of existing contaminants into drinking water supplies.
What Central Ohio Residents Are Seeing
Dublin resident and data center activist Amy Swank has been pushing for greater public awareness. “There is a lack of understanding and a need for education,” she said. “What these really do, how they really impact our electricity, our water, our community noise pollution level, light pollution level, and then what are the economic benefits to having one? I don’t think people truly grasp that.”
The impacts accumulate slowly. A family notices their well water tastes different. Neighbors start comparing health notes and realize several households have similar problems. Someone files a water quality complaint, but testing is delayed or incomplete. By the time patterns become undeniable, years have passed and health damage is already done.
Awareness as Infrastructure
Some data center operators are beginning to shift practices. Amazon recently announced that 120 of its facilities will switch to recycled water from wastewater treatment plants rather than drawing from fresh drinking water supplies. Whether this happens in Ohio, and whether it’s enough, remains to be seen.
The Ohio EPA is accepting public comments on the data center permit proposal through December 17. This is one of the rare moments when residents can formally weigh in on regulatory decisions that will shape their water quality for years to come.
But beyond permits and corporate pledges, there’s a simpler need: people who live near these facilities need to know they exist, understand what they do, and recognize that unexplained health patterns in their community may have an environmental source. That awareness doesn’t require advanced degrees or political mobilization; it just requires asking the question.
If you live in central Ohio, you probably live within a few miles of a data center. Your water comes from the same aquifer these facilities draw from. Your air carries the same emissions. And when your body reacts, when you’re tired all the time, when your child can’t breathe easily, when your pregnancy ends without explanation, there may be a reason beyond bad luck or genetic predisposition.
This is not about fear. It is about understanding how the places we live shape our health, often in ways we are never told.
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