Noise pollution may be reaching dangerous levels for residents living near the Memphis-Mississippi border.
This area of split governance is the home of Elon Musk’s xAI data center campus that runs Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot for the social platform X.
Once called the “world’s biggest supercomputer,” the campus was initially singular for both its power capacity, which has been a shifting total of around 2 gigawatts, and its method of on-site gas generation. But the xAI model will soon be replicated within the next few years, with dozens of projects planned in industry-friendly states.
The side effects of this industrial expansion include air pollution, planet-warming emissions and an emerging pollutant of concern: noise that never turns off.
The sounds and vibrations from data center complexes are penetrating surrounding towns — with very few regulations in the way and little public awareness about their harms.
The off-grid energy of xAI
The sprawling xAI campus looks like a small boomtown, splashed with trademarks of its founder.
Buses transport workers in and out all day amid clouds of construction dust. Men jacketed with lime green construction vests drive Teslas. Security personnel guard fencesadornedwith signs warning against drones and “droids” seeking to capture what’s on the other side.
One fence shields what’s juicing this operation: roughly 60 to 70 gas turbines.
At least from view.
Their grating sound is not so easily hidden.
These turbines, rolled in on semitrucks without permits over the past year as part of what was promised to be a temporary power plant, are designed like jet engines.
They never turn off, so for the residents living nearby, the proverbial plane never passes.
“It’s 24/7,” said Jason Haley, who can just make out a wall of the xAI campus from his backyard in Southaven, Mississippi, just over the state line from Memphis. “People will say it’s like white noise. … It’s not. It’s a feeling.”
He no longer enjoys gardening or hanging out in his backyard. He’s sleep-deprived, stressed and occasionally agitated during the two days he works from home each week.
The noise invades his home. He has tried to block it with earbuds and keeps box fans running to help drown it out. But he often feels what he describes as “pressure.”
“I’ve had ringing in my ears,” Haley said. “I don’t know if that’s my body trying to fight off the noise, or if I’ve developed tinnitus.”
Last month, xAI said that it would remove its collection of temporary turbines in one year after it finishes construction of about 40 permanent, supposedly quieter turbines. These turbines are currently the primary source of power for the campus, and the company purchases some power from utilities.
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The power situation may soon become even more complex, however, and potentially noisier. Earlier this month, Musk announced that the company would expand to 20 GW of compute power, fed primarily by “the power plant.”
So, Haley is not optimistic. He said the company has repeatedly changed plans and broken promises.
“I was told I think in November that the noise would be getting better in a week. And here we are. It hasn’t gotten any better,” he said.
Haley has reported the issue to local officials and police, and he sued the SpaceX-owned company in June in a citizen lawsuit.
He would consider moving, but fears the house he bought 20 years ago will no longer generate the necessary revenue — because who wants to live near that level of noise?
What is noise?
Sound and noise are often used interchangeably to describe the physical waves traveling through air, water and solids, but scientists and public health organizations are increasingly defining noise as unwanted and “harmful sound.”
The challenge to protect people from noise starts with how sound is measured.
For decades, the standard metric has been the A-weighted decibel (dBA) level, which is useful to determine the volume perceived by the human ear and whether there is potential for hearing damage. But it does not tell the full story.
A pedal harp playing the crescendoing glissandos of Tchaikovsky’s Waltz of the Flowers, a chatty office space, and a gas-powered leaf blower can all be measured at 80 decibels.
The standard metric loses a lot of information when translating sound into a single value. The pattern and duration of sound is also important — is it seconds, minutes, hours or all day — and the dBA metric only captures a specific range of frequencies, missing low and very high frequencies of sound.
“The use of the dBA to try and model community impact is just not sufficient,” said Jamie Banks, president of the health advocacy group Quiet Communities, yet most noise regulations in the U.S. rely on it. “We really need a new set of supplemental metrics.”
Data centers are an emerging source of noise pollution
Data center complexes emit both very low and high frequencies. Of particular concern, low-frequency noises, such as the internal humming of systems cooling processing chips, travel long distances and penetrate homes.
“It cannot be shut out by closing doors and windows, and so when people hear it in their home, they’re not able to get away from it. It’s inescapable,” Banks said.
Low-frequency noise is difficult to mitigate. Data center owners have invested money into sound barriers, but low-frequency soundwaves will just go up and over them, Banks said, indicating a lack of public and industry knowledge on the matter.
The public harm from these types of sounds is not intuitive. Higher and lower frequencies beyond the A-weighted decibel system are not processed through the auditory system, but they are processed through other parts of the body.
Current evidence suggests the noise of data centers is affecting people, pets and wildlife.
“It is very, very clear that communities are suffering,” Banks said. “They’re suffering health effects. They’re noticing the disappearance of wildlife … and impacts on pets and agricultural animals.”
The health impacts of noise
Noise pollution affects the body and brain profoundly.
A lot of harm happens at night, when people may think they are not responding to their environment, according to Dr. Mathias Basner, a researcher and professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Our whole sensory array is still monitoring the environment, and the most important long-term sensor is our hearing,” Basner said.
He has performed laboratory studies in which people are hooked up to electrodes while they sleep. They’re exposed to noise, waking up briefly each time with an increase in blood pressure and heart rate. But the next morning, the patients don’t recall even waking up.
“It’s a stress to the body, but we are unaware of that,” Basner said. “That is the big problem.”
With enough exposure, noise pollution can lead to premature death. The European Union’s environmental agency recognizes noise as a top public health threat and estimated that transit noise pollution alone causes more than 60,000 premature deaths there each year.
A growing body of research ties noise pollution to cardiovascular, metabolic and neurodegenerative diseases, cancer, mental health decline, and reduced learning abilities in children.
“We’re just beginning to fully understand this and what the overall burden of disease in the public is,” Basner said.
Noise pollution is best documented in communities near traffic, whether highways, trains or planes. These sounds have ebbs and flows; most airports, for example, have curfews for takeoff and landing from about 11 p.m. to 6 a.m., providing a temporary respite for neighbors.
Data centers, on the other hand, are constantly running, supporting the use of internet and AI.
“The number one problem is that this is a 24/7 noise source, and there is no escaping,” Basner said.
As this emerging source of noise pollution proliferates across the nation, he said the need for more research to understand its harms is urgent. But he also warned against using this research gap to delay action, which is a common wish among industries seeking to avoid regulations.
“That is always a very easy out to say, ‘We don’t know anything. Let’s first do like 15 studies and then in 20 years, we can make a decision,’” Basner said. “You basically have to translate the research we already have.”
The xAI model is spreading
An increasing number of communities, from Nashville to Seattle, are imposing moratoriums on data centers, but some places are still welcoming the facilities seeking to serve the public’s demand forfast internet, streaming and AI.
Massive project proposals with an energy model similar to xAI’s current campus have popped up in gas-producing regions like Texas and Ohio and industry-friendly states like Kentucky and West Virginia.
“Industry will go to places where they know they can get away with it,” said Erica Walker, an epidemiologist at Brown University. “It’s a signature of frontline communities.”
More than 70 data centers are planned with a collective 143 GW of behind-the-meter gas generation, equivalent to the annual planet-warming pollution of Australia, according to a report released last month by the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project.
Data center developers can power up quickly with their own turbines, avoiding yearslong waiting lists to connect to regional grids, and start churning profits to the tune of tens of billions of dollars annually per gigawatt.
For the neighbors wanting peace and quiet, Walker said, the story of data centers may be the same as communities who have experienced wood pellet plants or petrochemical refineries, so long as public demand for them grows and urban planning and negotiations fall short.
Noise pollution could go unchecked.
This story is part of our series exploring the impacts of data centers in our region. It was produced by the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom, a collaboration between West Virginia Public Broadcasting, WPLN and WUOT in Tennessee, LPM, WEKU, WKMS and WKU Public Radio in Kentucky, and NPR. Sign up for the weekly Porch Light newsletter here for news from around the region.
