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Are bitcoin miners causing major health problems?

The sleepy town of Granbury, TX was in for a rude awakening when Marathon Digital Holdings opened a bitcoin mine — an operation that not only draws a lot of energy, but creates a tremendous amount of noise:

“We’re living in a nightmare,” Sarah Rosenkranz says… As rock music blares from the speakers and other patrons chatter away, Rosenkranz pulls out her phone and clocks 72 decibels on a sound meter app — the same level that she records in Indigo’s bedroom in the dead of night. In early 2023, her daughter began waking up, yelling and holding her ears. Indigo’s room directly faces the mine, which sits about a mile and a half away. She soon refused to sleep in her own room. She then developed so many ear infections that Rosenkranz pulled her from school in March and learned how to homeschool her for the rest of the semester.

This feature in Time by Andrew Chow is expertly reported. It’s difficult to prove a casual link between the mine’s constant racket and the town’s health, but it’s hard not to be alarmed by what Granbury residents are suffering from: migraines, vertigo, nausea, leaking ear fluids, and a number of other horrifying ailments.