Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town

Steven Saus@midwest.social to Technology@lemmy.world – 168 points – Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
time.com

cross-posted from: https://midwest.social/post/14304762

Over the course of several months in 2024, TIME spoke to more than 40 people in the Granbury area who reported a medical ailment that they believe is connected to the arrival of the Bitcoin mine: hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, vertigo, tinnitus, migraines, panic attacks. At least 10 people went to urgent care or the emergency room with these symptoms. The development of large-scale Bitcoin mines and data centers is quite new, and most of them are housed in extremely remote places. There have been no major medical studies on the impacts of living near one. But there is an increasing body of scientific studies linking prolonged exposure to noise pollution with cardiovascular damage.

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🙄 Sounds a lot like this classic example where residents complained about headaches, rashes, nausea, tinnitus, etc from a cell tower, only for it to be revealed that it was not powered up:

https://mybroadband.co.za/news/wireless/11099-massive-revelation-in-iburst-tower-battle.html

"Headaches, nausea, tinnitus, dry burning itchy skins, gastric imbalances and totally disrupted sleep patterns..."

At the meeting Van Zyl agreed to turn off the tower with immediate effect to assess whether the health problems described by some of the residents subsided. What Craigavon residents were unaware of is that the tower had already been switched off in early October – six weeks before the November meeting where residents confirmed the continued ailments they experienced.

It could be but also datacenters are ridiculously loud and the sound is very high pitched. Would drive anyone nuts if they could hear it.

On the inside, yeah maybe; but a properly designed data center shouldn’t be louder than any typical building on the outside. But hey, this is in a rural Texas town, so I won’t be surprised if the building is not up to code.

"Properly" and "should" are doing a lot of work here.

Huh? That makes no sense. High pitched sounds are attenuated VERY easily and the only sound you could ever hear outside the dozen or so I've worked in/around you could only hear the HVAC gear outside. There's a reason why when you go see a concert outside there's a linear array of horns facing the audience while the subs are under the stage.

I agree. So if people are hearing it and demonstrating it with decibel readers then there's probably little to no sound dampening.

They are deafening but usually they are very well insulated seeing as keeping servers cool is very expensive and extremely important.

'[The Constable measures the sound level at 91dB, the max that his decibel metre can record]

This level of noise, the CDC writes, can cause hearing damage after two hours of exposure. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration advises that employees can only work in 90-decibel settings for eight hours a day and are required to wear ear protection. And Texas state penal code deems any noise above 85 decibels unreasonable. Over the course of 2024, [the Constable] has recorded a noise above 85 decibels coming from the plant more than 35 times. "

Whilst the health concerns reported are the thing that would make these complaints more serious (if true), this level of noise is also just insanely high from a nuisance perspective, even if the health problems of the town are unrelated.