The Trump administration has approved two new datacenter chemicals to which exposure can result in “sudden death” and a range of other serious health risks, like cancer, eye corrosion, neurological damage and reproductive harm, a new lawsuit warns. The two compounds approved by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for import and immediate use in facilities across the US are photoacid generators that also appear to be Pfas “forever chemicals”, though it is unclear because much of the documents are redacted. Some Pfas are commonly used in the production of semiconductors.
The acknowledged in its approvals that it does not know the level at which the chemicals are “acutely lethal” or cause other serious health damage, but the agency still approved them anyway, said Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, an attorney with the Earthjustice nonprofit, which filed the suit. In consent orders approving the chemicals that were reviewed by the Guardian, the also concedes that the chemicals present an “unreasonable risk” to workers and the public, but still approved them. That violates the law, Kalmuss-Katz said.
If there is an “unreasonable risk”, then the Toxic Substances Control Act requires the to “prohibit or limit the manufacture, processing, distribution in commerce, use, or disposal of such substance or to prohibit or limit any combination of such activities to the extent necessary to protect against an unreasonable risk”. The restrictions the put in place are minimal and non-protective, Kalmuss-Katz said, and the severity of the chemicals’ harms, the absence of data, and the failure to take protective steps are highly unusual. Redactions in the consent orders also make it unclear if the compounds were fast-tracked by the under a controversial late 2025 Trump executive order to speed up the approval of data center chemicals.
Public health advocates at the time said the order appeared to suggest the administration intended to ignore chemical safety review laws. The name of the company that produces the chemicals is also redacted. Producing semiconductors is a highly complex process and Pfas are essential ingredients used in as many as 1,000 steps at the nanometric level, including photolithography and plasma processing.
Ultraviolet light is filtered through photoacid generators to imprint circuit patterns onto the semiconductor wafer. Most of the chemicals used in that process do not remain on the chip, but are instead discharged in wastewater or otherwise disposed of. Other types of Pfas are used in datacenter cooling.
Pfas are a class of at least 16,000 compounds dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down, and accumulate in the human body and environment. Testing data from 2022 from one US production plant, or “fab”, previously reviewed by the Guardian showed as much as 78,000 parts per trillion (ppt) of PFAS in wastewater from some samples. The legal limit for several common compounds in drinking water is 4ppt.
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