Clean air advocates say unchecked growth in Georgia’s data center industry could harm public health. Especially for people in metro Atlanta where air quality has worsened. 

More than 4% of all electricity used nationwide powers data centers, according to the Pew Research Center, and AI-optimized hyperscale data centers use servers equipped with powerful computer chips that can perform trillions of mathematical calculations per second and require two to four times as many watts to run than their traditional counterparts.

Five data center projects are ongoing, and more are proposed — all in the city of South Fulton. They are being built in anticipation of growth in artificial intelligence, 

“There’s also a 1-million-square-foot one that’s being proposed in South DeKalb,” said Kiya Stanford with the advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force in Georgia. “If you look at the demographics of these regions, they have in common that they’re primarily communities of color. And that’s intentional.”

While the projects may bring jobs and money into a community while under construction, data centers won’t sustain economic growth, Stanford said.

“We need to connect the dots between industrial development, environmental pollution, and our right to breathe clean air,” she said, adding that residents should attend local government meetings to share their concerns. 

Pollutants that come from the power sources of these data centers can have an adverse effect on human health, she said. 

In metro Atlanta specifically, the number of unhealthy ozone days rose from 1.8 days in 2023 to 5.5 days in 2024, she said.

“So, there are immediate correlations happening in terms of extreme heat and unhealthy ozone,” she said. “That’s happening within metro Atlanta specifically.”

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Georgia’s Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner John King is fining health insurance companies over $20 million for violating the state’s mental health parity laws, but an advocacy group says more can be done.

“Parity” means physical and mental conditions should be treated in the same way. So, if a person has a broken leg or becomes suicidal, both concerns would be addressed in an emergency room.

Jeff Breedlove with the Georgia Council for Recovery says the fines are a drop in the bucket for big insurance companies, and lawmakers need to pass House Bill 612, creating a panel to review complaints.

“We cannot let Georgia get into a pattern where big insurance executives and their cronies decide it’s more affordable financially for big insurance to simply pay a state a fine every year,” Breedlove said. “And if that becomes a pattern, that will have to be dealt with because a $2,000 fine and a $5,000 fine to big insurance, that’s like charging me a quarter for a fine.”

King’s Aug. 15, 2023, report found more than 6,000 violations by 22 health insurers of the state’s mental health parity law that passed in 2022. The fined companies were not named in the press release.

“I was there when Georgia’s Mental Health Parity Act was signed into law in 2022,” King said. Three years later, our initial examinations show that insurers have turned a blind eye to the rules and continue to deprive Georgians of the essential behavioral health resources they deserve.”

The action that King took is the very validation of why House Bill 612 must pass the General Assembly and must be signed into law so that we can get to work on more effective oversight for the Parity Act itself, Breedlove said.

“Because big insurance is making a laughing stock of this historic effort of the General Assembly and that can’t be tolerated,” he said.

Consumers who believe they are the victim of a mental health parity violation may file a complaint online or call 1-800-656-2298.

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They’ll also treat patients with ketamine to address treatment-resistant depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.  

Tricia Pease with Serenity said the drug helps by encouraging rapid growth of new and beneficial neural pathways. 

“Your neural pathways are failing and your brain’s defense is, for some unknown reason, to tell yourself you should die,” she said. “Terrible defense, honestly, but that’s what our brain does.”

Pease said that, in some people, the neural pathway growth can happen within hours, so ketamine can be an excellent tool in crisis intervention. 

GPB’s Health Reporting is supported by Georgia Health Initiative
Georgia Health Initiative is a non-partisan, private foundation advancing innovative ideas to help improve the health of Georgians. Learn more at georgiahealthinitiative.org

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“I literally was kicked out of class, had to go to the infirmary and get my vaccine, my MMR, updated or, you know, a booster, even though I’d been vaccinated,” she said. “No ill effects whatsoever.”

DeMatteis, who is now vice president of policy and advocacy for the Partnership to Fight Infectious Disease (PFID), said she needed that proof to go back to class without fear of spreading a potentially fatal disease.

For every 1,000 children who get measles, one or two will die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

A school-age child, who was not vaccinated against measles, was confirmed by state and local health officials to have died of the preventable disease, weeks into an outbreak that spans Texas and New Mexico.

It’s the first reported U.S. death from the illness since 2015.

“It’s predictable, when measles occurs in unvaccinated children and adults,” said Dr. Carol Baker, a pediatrician and infectious diseases specialist who’s retired from the Baylor College of Medicine, “I’m not surprised, but I am so sad.”

How do I know if I’m vaccinated? Do I need a booster?

Vaccines against measles, mumps and rubella work. That’s why cases are rarely reported and deaths from measles have been almost unheard of in the United States, until this week when an unvaccinated child died in Texas.

“We’re not as worried about the risks of diseases that we just don’t experience,” DeMatteis said. 

Measles is one of the most contagious human viruses but it is almost entirely preventable through vaccination. Herd immunity, when 95% or more members of the community are immune, protects those who cannot be immunized. 

But the world is well below that, with an estimated 81% of children receiving their first measles-containing vaccine dose, and only 71% of children receiving their second measles-containing vaccine dose, according to a joint publication by the World Health Organization (WHO) and CDC.

The 2022 report showed the lowest global coverage rates of the first dose of measles vaccination since 2008, although coverage varies by country.

“For many diseases, immunity wanes over time,” DeMatteis said. “So, with a very high vaccination rate in the U.S. against measles, your risk of contracting it, even if your immunity had lessened somewhat, is low.”

Vaccination status is a conversation DeMatteis strongly recommends people have with their health care provider, especially those who may be undergoing cancer treatment or have an autoimmune condition.

The recent rise in measles outbreaks has people questioning whether they had a measles vaccination as a child. 

When immunization records aren’t available from your health care provider, every state, as well as the District of Columbia and most U.S. territories, maintains an immunization registry called an immunization information system (IIS).

Medical and religious exemptions

Vaccine mandate recommendations come from the federal level, which is where the new Health and Human Services secretary and other public health officials can have a pretty profound influence, DeMatteis said.

Mandates and allowing exemptions from those mandates happens on a state level. So, by not requiring childhood vaccines to attend public school, more students are at risk, she said.

“We’re already seeing some states broadening the opportunity for exemptions,” she said. “The measles outbreak that I mentioned in Texas, that county in Texas has one of the highest exemption rates from mandatory vaccines for children.”

More than one-third of children in the United States do not receive vaccines on schedule as recommended by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), leaving children vulnerable to preventable infections, diseases, and their complications, a study published in Pediatrics suggests.

That’s an increase from about 16% in 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, said the senior author, Robert Bednarczyk, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Global Health in Emory’s Rollins School of Public Health.

“It is notable that even for children who did not adhere to the recommended schedule, some did reach up-to-date status in childhood, but at the cost of additional vaccination visits — approximately 3 additional visits were needed to get to up-to-date status,” Bednarczyk said.

Most U.S. children are vaccinated against 14 potentially serious illnesses by age 2, as recommended by the ACIP.

That could change.

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he plans to investigate the childhood vaccination schedule that prevents measles, polio, and other dangerous diseases, despite promising not to during his confirmation hearing.

In a public opinion poll from PFID, the majority of people recognized the public health benefits and supported continued availability of FDA approved vaccines, and that included parents, 88% of whom said they follow their health care providers recommendations when it comes to getting their children vaccinated.

“We found in our poll, 70% of those polled are concerned about the lower rates of childhood vaccines and want to be able to continue to have that access,” DeMatteis said. “And that is one thing that the new HHS secretary has promised: that if you want to get vaccinated, you will be able to have those vaccines and have access to those vaccines.”

Medicare covers flu vaccines, pneumonia vaccines and others at no cost, DeMatteis said, and there is a vaccine program for children that helps to subsidize the vaccine costs for children.

“Many people get their health care access through Medicaid, particularly children, and vaccination is a major part of that,” she said. “So, if it becomes more expensive, if access is harder to find, that certainly will depress our vaccination rates and unfortunately could lead to more outbreaks.”

As of Feb. 20, 2025, one school-aged child died of measles and a total of 93 measles cases were reported by eight jurisdictions: Alaska, California, Georgia, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York City, Rhode Island and Texas.

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Measles case reported in Atlanta: DPH seeks those who may have been exposed

The individual acquired the virus while traveling within the United States.

That marked the first reported measles case in Georgia in 2025; last year, DPH reported six cases of measles.

PREVIOUS REPORTING: Unvaccinated Family Caused Largest Measles Outbreak In Georgia Since 2000

The MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine is safe and effective at preventing measles and rubella, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

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