‘We’re Living in a Nightmare’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Author: By Andrew R Chow/Granbury, Texas
- Full Title: ‘We’re Living in a Nightmare:’ Inside the Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
- Category: articles
- Document Tags: #tech
- URL: https://time.com/6982015/bitcoin-mining-texas-health/
Highlights
- 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. And one local doctor—ears, nose, and throat specialist Salim Bhaloo—says he sees patients with symptoms potentially stemming from the Bitcoin mine’s noise on an almost weekly basis. (View Highlight)
- Rather, the problems started when Constellation Energy, which operated the plant, signed a deal in 2021 to power a new Bitcoin mining facility that would sit directly on its lot. The new facility consisted of 163 squat metal boxes resembling shipping containers, which housed a total of over 30,000 computers. These computers started running in the summer of 2022, and seemed to be switched on all day and night. (View Highlight)
- The dust, it turns out, was just a prelude to the noise. In order to cool the machines, the site’s operators attached thousands of fans to the containers, which churned constantly, emitting a vicious buzz. As more machines were switched on, the noise sounded like a ceiling fan, then a leaf blower, then a jet engine. It consumed afternoon dog walks and revved through cloudless nights, vibrating the trailer homes of many of the low-income residents who live blocks from the facility. (View Highlight)
- Health effects have the potential to extend past the human residents of Granbury. Studies have shown that man-made noise pollution harms animals and wildlife, causing oxidative stress and memory loss in rodents, acute anxiety in dogs, and a decrease in forest growth. Shenice Copenhaver’s dog, Persephone, started going bald and developed debilitating anxiety shortly after the Bitcoin mine began operating four blocks away. Directly next door, Tom Weeks’ dog Jack Rabbit Slim started shaking and hyperventilating uncontrollably for hours on end; a vet placed him on the seizure medication Gabapentin. Rosenkranz’s chickens stopped laying eggs for months. And Jerry and Patricia Campbell’s centuries-old oak tree, which had served as the family’s hub and protector for generations of backyard family reunions and even a wedding, died suddenly three months ago. (View Highlight)
- Marathon says that immersion cooling, in which computers are placed in tubs of oil, will largely fix the noise problem. But the technique has potential drawbacks, including the difficulty of regularly performing maintenance on a computer submerged in oil, says Kent Draper, the chief commercial officer of the Bitcoin and AI data center operator IREN. “Although it's been around for a long time in the industry, it's just not that widely adopted,” he says. (View Highlight)
- “Historically, Bitcoin miners go to the cheapest source of electricity with the least amount of regulation, and they do the cheapest thing possible,” DeRoche says. “It's one of the reasons why noise pollution from crypto mining tends to be so much worse than traditionally-operated data center operators.” (View Highlight)