A coalition of US environmental groups has formally urged the Environmental Protection Agency to reject the introduction of new per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) for use in data center cooling systems, The Guardian reports.

The petition lands as the EPA weighs how to handle a wave of chemical approvals tied to the rapid expansion of data center construction across the United States. Fluorinated fluids — valued for their nonflammability and thermal stability — sit at the center of a permitting question with direct consequences for the waste and recycling sector: any new PFAS stream that enters commercial use eventually surfaces in end-of-life electronics, liquid cooling infrastructure, and industrial wastewater streams.

Environmental groups argue that approving additional PFAS chemistry for cooling applications would expand the universe of "forever chemicals" already burdening water treatment systems, landfill leachate management, and incineration permitting. PFAS compounds resist conventional degradation pathways, which is precisely the property that makes them attractive coolants and persistent contaminants at the same time.

The groups' filing targets the EPA's approval authority over new chemical uses. Under Toxic Substances Control Act procedures, the agency reviews new chemical substances and significant new uses of existing ones before they reach the market. The petition asks the agency to exercise that authority to keep additional fluorinated cooling fluids out of the data center supply chain rather than manage their downstream consequences.

For the recycling and solid waste industries, the stakes are material. Liquid cooling architectures — increasingly specified for high-density compute installations — create a new category of spent fluids and contaminated hardware. Each PFAS variant approved for that application adds analytical and disposal complexity for processors who already face tightening state-level limits on PFAS in biosolids, leachate, and effluent. Scrap electronics handlers in particular would absorb a waste stream with no established destruction pathway at commercial scale.

The request also puts the EPA in a bind of its own making. The agency has separately designated two PFAS compounds as hazardous substances under the Superfund program and set enforceable drinking water limits for several others — regulatory actions premised on reducing PFAS exposure. Approving new PFAS uses for data center cooling would run against the direction of those rules, the environmental groups contend.

Industry pressure points the other way. Data center operators and their equipment suppliers favor fluorinated fluids because they suppress fire risk in facilities packed with high-power hardware, and water-based alternatives impose infrastructure costs of their own. The Guardian's report frames the dispute as a test of whether federal chemical policy will accommodate the data center buildout or constrain it.

Neither the EPA nor the petitioning groups have published a decision timeline in the material reported so far. What happens next turns on the agency's response to the petition — and, behind it, on whether the EPA's broader PFAS regulatory framework, including its restrictions on chemical uses, holds as the data center construction pipeline accelerates. Stakeholders in waste processing and electronics recycling will be watching the docket: an approval would create a new persistent waste stream with no end-of-life answer, while a rejection would signal that Superfund-era caution still governs new fluorinated chemistry entering the market.