Death by Data Centers
I’m an oncology nurse in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley. My patients and I breathe the same polluted air, and we can’t afford the toxic exposure from the gas-fired plants set to power the state’s proposed AI data centers.
My patient is throwing up when I enter the room. There are beads of sweat on her head; her brow is wrinkled with fear. I place a cool washcloth on her neck. “It’s OK,” I say. “It will pass. I’m here with you. I’ll be right back with an anti-nausea medicine. You don’t even have to swallow it. I can push it through your IV.”
I walk out of the room, always quickly, because there are a dozen other things to do. I try to pull her medicine from the electronic dispenser without anyone interrupting me. I don’t want to let my patient wait. I make it back to the room, draw it up in a syringe, and flush it into her body, slowly now, because pushing it too quickly can cause heart dysrhythmias.
I look up at the television in her room and see a commercial from Meta, spotlighting people in small-town Louisiana who are seemingly thrilled to have one of the world’s largest data centers built in their neighborhood, so thankful for the jobs it will apparently bring. I look back at my patient, who is stuck here in the hospital with cancer, as rage rises inside me.
I am an oncology nurse in “Cancer Alley,” the gorgeous, haunted eighty-five-mile stretch of the Mississippi River between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This section of the river alone is stuffed with around 200 oil, gas, and petrochemical operations, making up 25 percent of U.S. petrochemical processing. The chemicals involved in the industry are deadly: Almost every census tract on this stretch ranks among the top 5 percent for cancer risk from toxic air pollution, over forty-seven times what the federal government has deemed acceptable and, in some places, seven times the national average. Already at the frontlines of the cancer-causing petrochemical industry, Louisiana now faces a new wave of AI data center development and, with it, new sources of pollution. Across the United States, these data centers are mostly powered by gas or coal. Meta’s proposed $200 billion data center in Richland Parish, Louisiana, is no different. To support the energy requirements, one utility company, Entergy Louisiana, plans to build ten new gas-fired power plants.
Tech companies like Meta want us to believe that the AI boom is inevitable, and we all might as well get on board. But I’m a nurse, and my job is to advocate for my patients. Even without these new data centers, Louisiana has seen enough death and destruction.
The data centers haven’t infiltrated the cancer statistics yet, but state politicians, including those at the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality, already deny that residents of Cancer Alley face a higher cancer risk. The basis of their claim is a mix of inaccurate measurement and willful lies. State air quality monitoring stations intentionally don’t track the release of several of the chemicals—including formaldehyde, ethylene oxide, and chloroprene—that have been found to most contribute to cancer risk. To further this practice, Donald Trump’s administration proposed a new federal rule in August that would exempt data centers from being required to disclose information about the pollution they create. Additionally, due to patient confidentiality laws, cancer rates are not allowed to be published by geographic area if the underlying population is 20,000 people or less, which applies to many of the small towns where industry has moved in along the Mississippi. While our political leaders may deny the truth, everyone in Cancer Alley knows someone with cancer, often many people—sometimes their whole family.
One patient of mine, who was admitted for last-ditch chemotherapy to hopefully extend her life, was joined by her sister, who slept in the same room to keep her company. She has cancer too. Both of their brothers had cancer. One has died. “I don’t know why we all have cancer,” she tells me. “We never smoked and we tried to eat healthy. The only thing I can think of is that we grew up right next to the Norco power plant.” The town is named after the New Orleans Refining Company, home to an enormous petrochemical plant now owned by Shell and an oil refinery owned by Valero. Plenty of my patients live in Norco—and some of my coworkers too—many of whom know or suspect that they’ve been poisoned.
In March 2026 Entergy announced that the new Meta data center will be powered by seven Meta-funded gas plants, in addition to three other plants that have already been approved. Entergy requested these plants be fast-tracked to avoid the usual review process. The Louisiana Public Service Commission, which has so far aligned itself with Meta, is set to vote on the approval of the seven plants in December. Entergy CEO Phillip May reportedly promised Meta that they could “Use all [the gas] you want, we’ll make more.” Governor Jeff Landry spearheaded the project too, though he and others involved have signed non-disclosure agreements with Meta to prevent information about the project from being available to the public. In a press release from March, a Meta VP thanked him for the state’s business-friendly environment. “Today,” the governor said, “Louisiana once again demonstrates our commitment to capital.”
This commitment has a long history, and has come at the cost of Louisianans’ lives. Many of the petrochemical facilities dotting this stretch of the Mississippi River were built on the land of former plantations where indigo, sugarcane, cotton, and tobacco were tended and harvested by enslaved Africans and their children. Today, slavery looks different. More than 50,000 people in the state are incarcerated, with many forced to do agricultural work under the blazing sun for pennies.
The neighborhoods in Cancer Alley with the highest cancer risk are disproportionately Black and low-income, communities that the fossil fuel industry has reaffirmed are disposable. Many residents that were displaced by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were housed in formaldehyde-laden trailers, exposed to dangerous levels of the cancer-causing chemical; the federal government was aware of this and delayed taking action.
Contrary to repeated promises from state officials who claim that new oil and gas infrastructure will bring abundance, this commitment to capital has not trickled down to benefit the rest of us. Louisiana is the poorest state in the country, with nearly 19 percent of the population living under the federal poverty level. Organizations like Rise St. James, Inclusive Louisiana, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Concerned Citizens of St. John, and other fierce advocates have worked for years to educate residents and block these developments.
I have a new patient with a suspected diagnosis of acute myeloid leukemia. New patients are always tough for me. They’re not used to being in a bed for weeks on end, disturbed every hour with no expectation of privacy. I think back to one of my first patients, a tough old Cajun man who teared up when I described the likely course of treatment. “I’m an outside guy,” he told me in quiet protest. I get it. The fluorescent lights, the startling lack of fresh air, the Styrofoam water cups are all oppressive even to me, and I get to leave every night.
This new patient is friendly, but I enter the room at an inconvenient moment. He’s on the phone planning his sister’s funeral. She died this morning, he says. Cancer. He tells me that his aunt died last week too—also from cancer—so they have a lot of funeral planning to do. He doesn’t say it, but I sense his fear. Here he is with a new cancer diagnosis. I stay quiet to respect the enormity of it all. He breaks the silence: “There’s a DuPont chemical facility near my house.” Oh. I look at him squarely in the eyes to show that I see him before he goes on. “I think it’s the data centers too. I drive all over the state for work, and farmers are all selling their land so the data centers can be built there instead,” he says. “Y’all are going to need a bigger hospital.”
He’s right. This spring, we had twenty-nine beds in our oncology unit, but the hospital has invested in a massive expansion so by the end of September, we will have fifty-three. From the windows of our unit overlooking the Mississippi River, I can see several petrochemical plants with mysterious fumes leaving their smokestacks. As their numbers grow, so do ours.
I ride my bike to and from work along the levee holding back the river. The ride gives me time to prepare for the day, or to let its heartbreaks and traumas settle before I arrive home in the evening. In the winter, my commute is lit by moonlight and the glow from the petrochemical plants, which never sleep. In the summer, it’s beautiful and humid, but I can smell the chemicals. I try to shake off the suffering I’ve witnessed. I breathe in and out, aware that each inhalation brings carcinogens into my own body. It’s suffocating to know that clean air is not available for me, my patients, or any of the people I love. I even feel sorry for the cicadas chirping nearby.
One of my patients was a stubborn man whose cancer had swollen his neck, face, and tongue. He was only able to breathe through a tube. He wanted a drink of water, but, with the swelling, there wasn’t room in his throat for a single drop. I wet a piece of gauze for him, and he squeezed it onto his tongue, then used it to anoint himself—a silent prayer in a cramped hospital room when his family wasn’t looking. He died at the end of my shift. His two children screamed and filled the hallways with their tears. His son, between angry sobs, told me and only me: “He didn’t even get to go outside. I wanted to take him outside.” I went home, past the gas plants, with that memory in my throat.
Dorothy Slater (she/her) is an oncology nurse in New Orleans and a senior fellow with the government watchdog organization Revolving Door Project. Her writing work focuses on political corruption and the destructive impacts of the fossil fuel industry and has appeared in the New Republic, Talking Points Memo, the American Prospect, the Daily Beast, and other outlets. As a nurse, her interests include oncology, palliative, and hospice care. She holds a BS in Nursing and a BA in Political Science. Contact Dorothy at slaterdorothy@proton.me.