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Is Elon Musk's Supercomputer Giving Memphis Cancer?

  ·  9 min read

I saw a video the other day claiming xAI’s Colossus data centre in Memphis is causing elevated cancer and asthma rates in the surrounding community. The video presents what looks like a straightforward environmental justice story: billionaire builds polluting facility, locals get sick, regulators look the other way.

It’s the kind of story that writes itself. Which is precisely why I decided to actually check whether it’s true.

The short answer: parts of it are, parts of it aren’t, and the conflation of the two might actually be making things worse for the community it purports to defend.

What xAI Actually Did Wrong #

Let’s start with what’s genuinely problematic, because there’s plenty.

xAI operated gas turbines without Clean Air Act permits for approximately 12-13 months. That’s not a contested interpretation - it’s what happened. The company installed turbines around June 2024, went live in late July or early August, and didn’t receive a permit until July 2025. For a full year, they operated under a disputed interpretation that “portable” turbines could run without permits for up to 364 days.

The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) argued this interpretation was wrong. The EPA’s January 2026 final rule vindicated that position, clarifying that “historically, however, the EPA has not regulated combustion turbines, even those that may be portable, as nonroad engines, but rather as stationary sources.”

There’s also the matter of how many turbines were actually running. The April 2025 aerial imagery showed 35 turbines on site. Mayor Paul Young insisted only 15 were operating. Then SELC released thermal imaging showing heat signatures from 33 of 35 turbines. The permit that eventually issued? For 15 turbines.

Someone’s lying here, and it’s probably not the thermal camera.

So yes - xAI built what amounts to a power plant in a residential area with no oversight, no permitting, and no public consultation. The Memphis city council complained they’d been “left in the dark” about the project. Councilwoman Rhonda Logan summed it up: “We don’t know anything. This is already here and we don’t know anything.”

This is a legitimate scandal. It deserves attention and accountability. But it’s not the scandal being sold in the video.

The Health Claims: Where Things Get Slippery #

Here’s where the narrative starts to diverge from reality.

The video and associated coverage makes three distinct claims that tend to get blurred together:

  1. xAI operated illegally without permits
  2. The turbine emissions pose health risks
  3. The facility is causing the elevated cancer and asthma rates in the community

Claim one is true. Claim two is partially supported. Claim three is almost certainly false.

Are the Emissions Harmful? #

In principle, yes. The EPA’s Integrated Science Assessment for Oxides of Nitrogen concludes that short-term NO2 exposure has a “causal” relationship with respiratory effects. Formaldehyde - which the 15 permitted turbines are authorised to emit at 9.79 tons per year - is classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

Satellite analysis commissioned by TIME found that average NO2 concentrations increased 3% comparing pre- and post-June 2024 periods, with peak concentrations up 79% near the data centre.

But here’s where it gets complicated. Southwest Memphis isn’t an isolated test environment. It’s a complex airshed with the TVA Allen power plant, Valero’s oil refinery, the Memphis Defence Depot, and 17-plus other Toxics Release Inventory facilities. Attribution to any single source is methodologically fraught.

There’s also no ground-level monitor meeting EPA standards in the immediate Boxtown neighbourhood. The satellite data shows column density, not what people are actually breathing. The City of Memphis ran short-term testing in June 2025 and found “no dangerous levels”, but didn’t measure ozone - the key pollutant of concern given NOx’s role as an ozone precursor.

A University of Memphis study found fine particulate matter increased about 1% from baseline. Not nothing, but not the disaster being portrayed either. Though they acknowledged their data came from xAI, not independent monitoring, which is… a choice.

So the honest assessment is: these emissions probably aren’t good for the community, we can’t say with precision how bad they are, and proper monitoring doesn’t exist to find out.

Did xAI Cause the Cancer and Asthma Rates? #

No. And this is where the narrative gets genuinely misleading.

The “4x cancer risk” statistic that appears in virtually every piece of coverage comes from a 2013 study in Atmospheric Environment by Jia and Foran that identified Southwest Memphis as an air pollution hotspot. That’s more than a decade before Colossus existed.

Similarly, Shelby County’s elevated pediatric asthma hospitalisation rates have been documented in peer-reviewed literature covering 2005-2015. The Asthma and Allergy Foundation named Memphis an “Asthma Capital” in their 2024 rankings - a designation based on data that largely predates xAI’s arrival.

These communities have been systematically exposed to industrial pollution for generations. The Valero refinery has operated since the 1950s. The Memphis Defence Depot is literally a Superfund site - a location contaminated with hazardous substances that poses a significant risk to human health or the environment identified and managed under the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980. This is a neighbourhood where a sterilisation facility emits ethylene oxide - a known carcinogen - and the Tennessee Department of Health has previously investigated cancer patterns in the area.

None of this is xAI’s doing.

And here’s the thing about cancer that should be obvious but apparently isn’t: solid tumours typically have latency periods of 10-40 years between exposure and clinical manifestation. The CDC’s World Trade Center Health Program establishes minimum latencies of 11-19 years for various cancers. Colossus has been operating for about 18 months.

Anyone claiming that xAI is causing the current elevated cancer rates either doesn’t understand oncology or is counting on their audience not to.

Why This Matters #

You might think I’m being pedantic. The facility operated illegally, the emissions are harmful, the community is sick - does the causal chain really matter?

Yes. It matters enormously. And here’s why.

When you attribute Southwest Memphis’s health crisis to an 18-month-old facility, you implicitly absolve the decades of industrial pollution that actually created it. You shift focus from the Valero refinery, the Superfund sites, the sterilisation plants, and the systematic decision-making that turned this neighbourhood into what activists correctly call a “sacrifice zone.”

You also make the problem seem more tractable than it is. If xAI is the cause, then shutting down xAI is the solution. But if the cause is cumulative exposure from dozens of facilities over generations, combined with housing policy, healthcare access, and social determinants of health, then the solution is far more complicated - and far more expensive - than making Elon Musk the villain.

There’s also a credibility problem. When environmental advocates make claims that don’t hold up to scrutiny, it gives ammunition to the people who want to dismiss all environmental concerns as hysteria. Every time someone says “xAI gave my neighbourhood cancer” when the data clearly shows that cancer risk was already 4x higher a decade ago, it makes it easier for the next polluter to wave away legitimate complaints.

The SELC, to their credit, has been careful to focus on the regulatory violations and potential future harm rather than making unsupportable causal claims about current health statistics. But the viral content and much of the media coverage has been far less disciplined.

What We Actually Know and Don’t Know #

We know:

  • xAI operated without permits for roughly a year
  • 35 turbines were documented on site, with thermal imaging suggesting 33 were active
  • The permit eventually issued covers only 15 turbines
  • Satellite data shows measurable NO2 increases after June 2024
  • Southwest Memphis had elevated cancer risk and asthma rates long before Colossus arrived

We don’t know:

  • Actual operating hours and emissions (no independent monitoring exists)
  • Whether pollution controls were installed
  • Ground-level pollutant concentrations (no adequate monitoring network)
  • Whether xAI’s operations have contributed any incremental health burden
  • What happened to the 20+ turbines not covered by the permit

The EPA’s January 2026 rule clarified that the turbines should have been treated as stationary sources requiring permits. But it’s a general rulemaking, not a facility-specific enforcement action. As of January 2026, no penalties have been announced.

The administrative appeal of the July 2025 permit was dismissed as moot in December 2025 after the permit had already issued.

The Uncomfortable Truth #

Southwest Memphis has been subjected to industrial pollution for decades. The decision-making that concentrated industrial facilities in this area while wealthier neighbourhoods got different treatment is well-documented in local history.

xAI’s arrival didn’t create this situation. But the manner of their arrival - fast, secretive, contemptuous of local oversight - is entirely consistent with the pattern. A billionaire built what amounts to a power plant in a residential neighbourhood without asking permission or obtaining permits, apparently confident that no one with power would stop him.

He was right about that last part.

Whether Colossus will meaningfully worsen the community’s health burden over time is genuinely unknown. It might. The emissions are real, and the cumulative effect of adding another pollution source to an already-overburdened area is unlikely to be positive. But the current elevated cancer and asthma rates? Those reflect exposures that happened years or decades ago, from facilities that have nothing to do with Elon Musk.

The environmental concerns in Southwest Memphis are real and serious. They deserve attention, investment, and policy response. But attributing them to xAI conflates a legitimate scandal (unpermitted operation) with an unsubstantiated claim (causing current disease), and in doing so may actually obscure the sources of harm rather than clarifying them.

I realise this isn’t the satisfying narrative. “Billionaire operates illegally for a year in a complex regulatory environment while community faces longstanding multi-source pollution burden that can’t be attributed to any single recent actor” doesn’t fit in a viral video. But it’s closer to the truth.

And if we actually care about the people living in Southwest Memphis - rather than just using them as props in a story about Elon Musk - the truth should matter.

Sources #

Regulatory and Legal:

Investigative Journalism:

Scientific:

Health Data:

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