Some Memphis residents say they’re already struggling for clean air after Elon Musk’s AI company began releasing plumes of pollution to power a massive data center.
“It’s God’s given air, and man shouldn’t take it away from us,” Easter Knox, a 76-year-old woman who lives in Boxtown—about three miles from the xAI data center—told Time earlier this year. “I don’t care how much money you got.”
Knox, who was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in 2024 and has lost three loved ones to cancer, said she began noticing the smell of gas in the air last year. Now, she keeps her windows shut because of what she described as a “rotten cabbage” odor…