Brent Taylor's gas stoves vs. xAI's turbines in Memphis

Listen – a lot of people aren’t gonna like what this essay says – and they’re gonna get defensive and take it the wrong way – but here I go anyway.

The xAI files

Every essay in this series is pinned to a question on the board at rachelandthecity.com/the-xai-files.

Look – there isn’t any solid research that shows the gas turbines at xAI are causing health problems. I’m not saying they aren’t – I’m saying there’s no study of actual people living near xAI that shows they are.

There have been studies that tested emissions – but people question the results of every one of them. And the few that talk about health are computer models, not studies of the people who live there.

On February 4th, 2025 – the day xAI’s water recycling plant land sale came before a Memphis City Council committee – Councilwoman Pearl Walker told xAI’s presenters that “this particular area of Memphis, Shelby County, and the state of Tennessee, the residential community that lies immediately out around from this area has been affected by environmental waste for decades. This area where you all are has a cancer rate of 4 times the national average. And I just wanted you to know that.”

Maybe you’ve heard that number too. But it isn’t true – I know cause I went and looked at the study.

She said it like it was a measured rate – as if somebody went out and counted cancer cases – but it’s really an estimate of cancer risk, worked out from what was in the air. The study behind it used air samples from 2008 to 2010 – and most of that risk came from traffic.

And I couldn’t find an actual study about the people who live there. The closest thing on record is a 2023 county and state study that checked real cancer cases in South Memphis – around a different plant on Florida Street, about four miles from Boxtown. It looked at four kinds of cancer and didn’t find higher rates there than out in Cordova and Eads.

The county health dept actually asked the EPA for a health study back in August 2024. On November 1st, 2024 – the EPA wrote back that it couldn’t figure out the local health risks with the info it had.

The U of M team backed this up too – and that’s the same team that found no real change in the air after xAI’s turbines started (that study has a lot of holes in it). They told the council on September 15th, 2026. Their slides say there was “no health impact assessment due to the lack of health data” in the area.

They also say there’s “NO field monitoring data for air quality in Southwest Memphis.” The county’s new air monitor down there only came on August 16th, 2026 – and it doesn’t even measure nitrogen dioxide or soot.

They asked for a real health study of the area.

The other “health” papers about xAI are models or expert reviews, not studies of the people who live there. That goes for the health impact report on the Southaven plant and for Dr. Helen Suh’s sworn statement in the NAACP lawsuit.

Okay – now that that’s established fact, let me tell you about a different health problem. It hits folks in Boxtown and all over Memphis – and it’s most likely doing way more damage than the gas turbines at xAI. And nobody needs a lawsuit or a data center shut down to fix it.

Brent Taylor is running for Congress in District 9 – one of the three newly redrawn districts that now split up Shelby County. And today he posted on his FB account that he’s running on the promise that he protected your right to breathe gas fumes in your own kitchen.

That’s the actual pitch.

His new campaign post brags that he co-sponsored the Freedom to Cook Act. That’s the law that stops TN cities and counties from banning gas stoves, water heaters and other appliances (or gas hookups) just cause of the fuel they run on. And he says his opponent – Justin Pearson – voted no.

He signs off with “Competence Over Chaos.”

Either way – nobody was coming for your stove.

When Gov. Bill Lee signed this thing in March 2023, not one city in TN was trying to ban gas stoves. And a 2020 state law already kept cities from blocking gas hookups anyway. The whole bill came out of a national freakout – it started after a federal safety commissioner said “any option is on the table” for regulating gas stoves. The White House even had to come out and say it – the president didn’t support banning them. TN lawmakers passed a law against it anyway – and the American Gas Association sent an email celebrating it to its state affairs committee that same morning.

So basically – Taylor’s asking for a promotion to Congress for rescuing a minority appliance from a ban that didn’t exist.

The part he left off the post is that gas stoves are bad for you – and I mean measurably bad.

Burning gas makes nitrogen dioxide – NO2 for short – and it inflames your lungs. Stanford researchers checked the air in more than 100 homes. In some test houses they ran a gas oven for an hour and a half. In half of those homes, the NO2 in a bedroom down the hall broke health limits in less than 30 minutes. In two of them, it hung around for two to three hours after the oven was off.

They estimate that breathing it over time from gas and propane stoves is behind about 50,000 current cases of childhood asthma in the U.S. The same Stanford team found that cooking with gas gives off benzene, which causes cancer – it went up in every kitchen they tested. And a team in Boston found benzene in 95% of the gas samples they pulled from home stoves and gas lines – before the gas was even lit.

It hits small homes the hardest. If you live in a place under 800 square feet – you get about four times as much NO2 from your stove as people in houses over 3,000 square feet. That’s a lot of apartments and rentals – places where folks can’t just call a contractor and swap the thing out.

A follow-up Stanford study found that for the people who cook with gas the most, more than half the NO2 they breathe at home comes from their own stove. It’s not coming from the interstate or a factory or a data center – it’s coming from the thing they make eggs on. For the average gas home it’s about a quarter, and switching to electric would cut how much NO2 those heavy cooks breathe about in half.

That brings me back to xAI and their gas turbines.

I’m gonna say this again. I’m not saying they aren’t dangerous – I’m saying we just don’t know.

Even if you believe the studies that say pollution is a problem around Colossus 1, there’s a catch. That 2013 study said most of the cancer risk came from vehicles – not the industrial polluters.

And there’s no way to tell from those studies which plant in that industrial park is the biggest source anyway. For one – there’s a TVA power plant right next door to xAI. And just a few miles away there’s an oil refinery that’s been there for years – sitting across the street from a neighborhood.

What we need is a better, more complete pollution study. If one thing comes from the moratorium – I hope it’s this.

But in the meantime, about one in seven TN homes still cooks with gas – and Brent Taylor is out here selling that as a good thing.

Think about gas coming out of a turbine a mile and a half from a neighborhood – gas that spreads out and thins as it travels. If that’s behind any health problems, what do you think that same gas burning inside someone’s home is doing?

So if health is really a big concern for anyone – the gas stoves might be a good place to put that xAI tax money to work. And you don’t necessarily have to replace them all. People who still use them could plug in a $60 induction burner – you just need pans a magnet sticks to. Or they could put in a range hood that actually vents outside.

Everyone’s revved up about this moratorium – which wouldn’t do anything about the data centers that are already running or stop the permanent gas turbines that are already permitted and running down at Colossus 1. But people want a villain to rage against. When I see protests, a lot of times I think about sports – you don’t really have to know the rules of the game to pick a team and cheer them on.

And all I can think about is – with all that manpower – what could they actually get done if they were focused on something that might make a difference?

::ducks::

If you like facts-first info on all this, consider leaving a tip on Venmo or PayPal – this stuff takes a lot of time to put together. And check out everything I’ve written with citations and receipts at the xAI Files.

Memphians are being poisoned by something worse than gas turbines

The xAI files

Sources

The xAI files

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