Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
Inside the 'Nightmare' Health Crisis of a Texas Bitcoin Town
A Bitcoin mine moved to a small town in Texas. One by one, the residents fell ill.
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.
Any statewide legislation is sure to hit significant headwinds, because the very idea of regulation runs contrary to many Texans’ political beliefs. “As constitutional conservatives, they have taken our core values and used that against us,” says Demetra Conrad, a city council member in the nearby town of Glen Rose.
Maybe your core values are really stupid...
"Lack of regulations is supposed to harm only people below us in the capitalism pyramid. But now we realize we're lower in the pyramid than we thought, so this needs to be stopped via regulation."
It's somehow 90 dB, that'd be horrific if I gave a shit about Repubs harming themselves with shitty legislation.
I do feel bad for anyone politically sane subjected to that despite voting otherwise. I wish it was 90 dB at the residences of Rafael Cruz and Ken Paxton instead of them.
"Who could have predicted our unwillingness to make laws against things we don't want would cause people to do things we don't want‽"
No, you're reading it wrong with emphasis on against, while she emphasized the us.
What she calls values aren't stupid, they're malicious, but usually targeted at groups she doesn't like
🙄 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.
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.
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.
Happened outside Paris too.
I'm no bitcoin mining apologist for sure but this is just crap journalism. There's a story like this for all kinds of industries in small towns with poor health. There are lots of industries that noise pollute (a lot of people live near airports) and I'm all for reasonable regulations to limit noise pollution, but this has boogeyman tinfoil hat nonsense all over it.
Yeah while I don't doubt that noise pollution can affect one's health I have to wonder how much of this is just the placebo effect, like with people complaining that cellphone towers are giving them migranes or rashes.
You're thinking of the nocebo effect. Placebo is positive. Nocebo is negative.
I lived next to a cell phone tower and I can tell you it certainly shriveled up my penis, so there's that. If Time wants to run an article about it I'd be happy to talk to them or show them pictures or let them talk to people on my tindr about it. I'm sure it's happened to a lot of people.
nice to see bitcoin is following the traditions set by coal
can you imagine those losers that downvoted you? Probably have their investments in Bitcoin and will forever be hopeful that they are going to be rich one day
A question that comes to mind: Is there a power plant nearby that's been running at a higher level since the Bitcoin mine settled there? The issue might not be just noise pollution.
"Technically there is federal mandate to regulate noise, which stems from the 1972 Noise Control Act—but it was essentially de-funded during the Reagan administration."
Of course it was. It's always fucking Reagan (or Thatcher)
In other news, 40 out of 11,000 people have medical issues that most Americans already have.
I think i got the black lung pop
Mer-man!
All for something so speculative and stupid that has no tangible benefit to society as a whole.
You mean like stock markets?
Decentralized finance could save the planet a massive amount of grift and wasted resources.
How? Corporations would still (and are) involved. Please detail.
Like almost any other thing being done massively by humans currently .
I wonder when the locals will start sabotaging that facility if they have no remedy with the law
oh hey, granbury, i used to live there!
Whoa.. pretty horrible.
The root cause issue could be power plants used to supply energy to the datacenters running the computers (there are many things a power plant can do to harm its environment), or if we consider electromagnetic hypersensitivity not being a pseudoscientific term but an actual thing; electromagnetic waves coming from all the computers at the same time in a concentrated space could have triggered this whole ordeal.
I can't really think of any other possibilities, and I highly believe first one is the case.
Edit: appearently if was noise whoops
Yeah but how is this any different than living next to ANY data center? Bitcoin mining is just racks of servers doing what servers do- sucking power, venting heat. A GPU farm for ai training or an AWS data center wouldn’t be any different, and this isn’t being widely reported as an issue. I wonder how the leap from chest pain to “it’s the bitcoins!!” happened.
Edit: ok I’d be mad too if there was some screaming loud fans next to my house 24/7 too, sounds like that’s the real issue.
Data centers are normally built with good security, and solid walls that keeps the roar of the fans inside. It seems like this mining outfit took the cheap road, and just set up shipping containers with servers inside them instead of building an actual building.
Still, these people shouldn't be mad at the bitcoiners, they should be mad at the state laws that allow these machines to be as loud as they are with no real penalty. Maybe they should write their State Legislature and tell them the bitcoin mines are killing innocent child processes in broad daylight, since abortion is all they seem to care about.
Normal datacenters aren't constructed out if metal shipping containers with external fans blowing through them. Most just look like big warehouses and don't emit 90db of noise (between a lawnmower and a chainsaw as noted in the article).
Well there is not really any reason to speculate if you read the article. They say it's the sound. It reaches 90 decibels right outside of people's homes. Some people are literally losing their hearing, and doctors in the article say that exposure to loud sounds can cause all of these heart issues.