In 13 Things the Data Center Industry Hopes You Never Ask About, we flagged forever chemicals as one of the industry's blind spots. This is the deep dive.
The data center industry is moving toward immersion cooling at the exact moment the chemicals it depends on are being banned worldwide. Communities are already paying the price.
What Are Forever Chemicals?
Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — PFAS — are a class of over 14,000 synthetic chemicals (per OECD and EPA catalogs) built around carbon-fluorine bonds, among the strongest in organic chemistry. They earned the name “forever chemicals” because they don't break down. Not in water. Not in soil. Not in sunlight. Not in the human body, where some PFAS have a half-life of over eight years (ATSDR Toxicological Profile).
They're everywhere. A 2022 Stockholm University study found PFAS in rainwater worldwide at levels exceeding EPA safety limits. A 2023 USGS study of over 700 sites found that 31% of US groundwater samples contained detectable PFAS — including sites far from any obvious industrial source.
The health effects are documented and severe. The International Agency for Research on Cancer classified PFOA — one of the most common PFAS — as a Group 1 carcinogen (the highest classification, alongside asbestos and tobacco smoke). Studies have linked PFAS exposure to liver damage, thyroid disease, immune system disruption, decreased fertility, developmental harm, ulcerative colitis, kidney cancer, and high cholesterol.
US litigation settlements have reached $18 billion (3M, DuPont, and related settlements). The societal cost — remediation, health treatment, monitoring — has been estimated as high as $17.5 trillion annually by ChemSec, a European advocacy organization focused on chemical safety. No government or academic source has published a comparable figure, making this the upper bound of current estimates.
This is not a fringe issue. It is one of the largest environmental health crises of the 21st century.
And the data center industry is quietly becoming one of its largest new contributors.
How Data Centers Use Forever Chemicals
The Cooling Fluid Problem
As AI workloads push server density higher — a single rack of advanced AI hardware can now demand 140 kilowatts of cooling (NVIDIA) — the industry is rapidly adopting immersion cooling. Servers are submerged directly in a liquid bath that absorbs and removes heat.
Two-phase immersion cooling, the most efficient variant, uses a dielectric fluid that boils at low temperature. The liquid absorbs heat until it vaporizes, carrying the heat away through phase change. It's elegant engineering.
The problem: the fluids that make this work are PFAS.
Fluorinert — a family of perfluorocarbon liquids — was the workhorse of early immersion cooling. These fluids have global warming potentials 5,000 to 10,000 times that of CO₂ (3M product data). They are persistent organic pollutants.
Novec 649— marketed as a next-generation, lower-impact alternative — was adopted by data center operators as the “responsible” choice for two-phase immersion cooling. It was used in proof-of-concept and production facilities by major technology companies.
Novec 649 is classified as a PFAS substance. When exposed to sunlight, it degrades into trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) — a persistent environmental contaminant. Its safety data sheet classifies it as H412: “Harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects.”
In December 2022, 3M announced it would cease production of all PFAS products by the end of 2025 — including Fluorinert and Novec 649. 3M completed that exit on schedule (confirmed January 2026). The primary supplier of immersion cooling fluids is gone.
The Fire Suppression Problem
Novec 1230— chemically related to Novec 649 — is widely used as a gaseous fire suppression agent in server rooms, replacing older halon-based systems. It's designed for environments where water would destroy millions of dollars in equipment.
Novec 1230 is classified as PFAS. It also degrades to TFA. 3M ceased its production as well.
Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF) — used historically at some data center facilities for external fire suppression — contains PFOS and other long-chain PFAS. AFFF is the foam most directly associated with the groundwater contamination crises at military bases and airports across the US and internationally. Its use at or near data center sites creates the same contamination pathways.
The Wastewater Problem
This is where communities feel it directly.
PFAS from cooling systems — through leaks, maintenance events, evaporative losses, and disposal — enters facility wastewater. PFAS from fire suppression testing enters stormwater drainage. PFAS from both sources reaches local water treatment systems.
The critical fact: conventional wastewater treatment does not remove PFAS. The chemicals pass through treatment plants and enter rivers, lakes, and drinking water supplies. Or they concentrate in sewage sludge — which is frequently applied to agricultural land, where PFAS leach into soil and groundwater.
Communities near data centers are reporting contamination. Some describe it as a sludge-like substance in their water — consistent with PFAS surfactant contamination, which causes visible foam and film on water surfaces.
The contaminated community didn't cause the contamination. But they're the ones drinking the water.
The Collision Course
The timing of this crisis is not coincidental. It's structural.
Demand side: AI is driving exponential growth in server density and heat output. The industry needs immersion cooling. It is building new high-density facilities at unprecedented scale.
Supply side: The primary manufacturer of the chemicals that make two-phase immersion cooling work has exited production entirely. Regulatory bodies worldwide are restricting or banning PFAS.
Regulatory side: The EPA has set enforceable drinking water limits at 4 parts per trillion for PFOA and PFOS — extraordinarily low, reflecting the severity of the health risk. The EU is developing a proposal to eliminate all non-essential PFAS use — the broadest chemical restriction ever proposed in Europe. Maine banned PFAS in all products — the first US state to do so — with the original 2030 deadline extended through 2032–2040 by product category. The Stockholm Convention has listed multiple PFAS as persistent organic pollutants requiring global elimination.
The industry is moving toward a technology that depends on chemicals that are being banned. Existing installations contain thousands of liters of PFAS-based fluids that will eventually need disposal. New installations are scrambling for alternatives that may not yet meet performance requirements.
And through all of this — no data center sustainability standard, certification, or reporting framework addresses PFAS.
What the Industry Isn't Doing
- No PFAS disclosure. No standard requires operators to publicly disclose what cooling fluids or fire suppression agents they use, or whether they contain PFAS.
- No PFAS monitoring. Facilities do not routinely test their wastewater discharge, stormwater runoff, or surrounding groundwater for PFAS contamination.
- No community notification. Residents are not informed that the facility in their community uses thousands of liters of forever chemicals in its cooling systems.
- No remediation responsibility. Unlike nuclear facilities, chemical plants, or fuel storage sites, data centers have no regulatory framework requiring PFAS contamination assessment or cleanup.
- No transition plans. Most operators using PFAS-based systems have no published timeline for transitioning to PFAS-free alternatives.
- No contribution to treatment costs. When PFAS contaminates a community's water supply, the community pays for advanced treatment — not the facility that introduced the chemicals.
Alternatives Exist
This is not an unsolvable problem. PFAS-free alternatives are commercially available for every major data center application:
Cooling: Single-phase immersion cooling uses non-fluorinated dielectric fluids — synthetic hydrocarbons, mineral oils, natural esters — that provide effective cooling without PFAS. Direct-to-chip liquid cooling uses water-based cold plates that bypass immersion fluids entirely. Both approaches are in production at scale.
Fire suppression: Inert gas systems (nitrogen, argon, IG-541), water mist systems, and aerosol-based systems all suppress fires without PFAS. They are commercially deployed in data centers today.
The technology exists to build PFAS-free data centers. The question is whether the industry will be required to use it — or whether communities will continue bearing the cost of a choice they never made.
What Communities Should Demand
If a data center is proposed, under construction, or operating in your community, these are reasonable demands:
- Full disclosure of all PFAS-containing substances used on-site — cooling fluids, fire suppression agents, coatings, and components
- Baseline testing — pre-construction PFAS testing of local groundwater, soil, and surface water to establish conditions before the facility operates
- Ongoing monitoring — quarterly PFAS testing of facility wastewater, stormwater discharge, and downgradient groundwater
- Discharge standards — facility wastewater must meet EPA drinking water limits for PFAS before any discharge
- PFAS-free preference — new facilities must use PFAS-free alternatives where technically feasible
- Transition timeline — existing facilities must publish a plan with dates for eliminating PFAS from operations
- Remediation responsibility — if facility operations contribute to PFAS contamination, the operator funds remediation and advanced water treatment for affected residents
These requirements are included in the Community Data Center Standard. They can be incorporated into Community Benefit Agreements, zoning conditions, and municipal ordinances.
The Standard Nobody Else Has Written
No existing data center framework — not LEED for Data Centers, not the Uptime Institute Tier system, not ISO 50001 — addresses PFAS use, monitoring, or elimination.
The Community Data Center Standard includes PFAS requirements across multiple pillars:
- Water Stewardship: PFAS disclosure, quarterly monitoring, discharge limits, transition plans
- Waste Heat / Liquid Cooling: PFAS-free cooling fluids required for new facilities
- Transparency: PFAS inventory and monitoring results published on real-time public dashboards
- Compliance Tiers: PFAS-free operations required at the highest certification level; remediation escrow fund mandated
We also introduced a new metric — the PFAS-Free Index (PFI)— measuring what percentage of a facility's operations use PFAS-free alternatives. The target: 100%.
That's what a comprehensive framework requires. Not voluntary commitments. Not aspirational goals. Specific requirements, measured and reported, with community governance and independent verification.
Why This Matters
PFAS in data centers is a perfect case study of everything wrong with how the industry interacts with communities:
- The harm is invisible until it's in your water
- The industry knows what it's using and stays quiet
- The costs are externalized to the community
- No regulation currently requires anything different
- Alternatives exist but aren't mandated
This is exactly what the Community Data Center Standard was built to address. Not the easy problems. The ones nobody else will touch.
The Community Data Center Standard is freely available — read the full framework.
Sources cited: IARC/WHO (2023, PFOA Group 1 carcinogen classification), Stockholm University (2022, “Outside the Safe Operating Space” PFAS study), Environmental Health Perspectives (2022, PFAS meta-analysis), C8 Science Panel, ChemSec ($17.5 trillion annual societal cost estimate), 3M (December 2022 PFAS exit announcement; $10.3B settlement 2023), EPA (2024 PFAS drinking water MCLs, 4 ppt), EU PFAS restriction proposal (2023, five-country submission), Stockholm Convention (PFOS 2009, PFOA 2019, PFHxS 2022), Maine PFAS product ban (enacted 2021), NVIDIA GB200 NVL72 (cooling density data), 3M Fluorinert/Novec 649/Novec 1230 product documentation. Full citation list →