In 2022, a new Bitcoin mining facility made its home in Granbury, a small rural Texas town. The center’s computers, running 24/7, are cooled by thousands of fans, also running constantly. “As more machines were switched on,” writes Andrew R. Chow, “the noise sounded like a ceiling fan, then a leaf blower, then a jet engine.” Granbury’s residents of all ages have experienced a long list of medical issues and emergencies since, including hypertension, heart palpitations, chest pain, migraines, vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss, ear infections, panic attacks, and more. Even the area’s nonhuman residents—from pets to local wildlife—have shown unexplainable symptoms. Chow reports on the physical and mental health effects of the mine’s noise pollution on the town’s population, and the need for stricter regulation in the state.
At first, residents responded to the intrusion by vacating their porches, retreating inside, and turning up their fans and air conditioners to the max. But many still felt tremors in their beds—including Larry Potts, a 77-year-old retired pastor who lives up the road from the plant. Potts says he stopped sleeping and started losing hearing in both ears. In February, his heart gave out after another sleepless night; he was rushed to the hospital and kept alive by an external pacemaker. There, he was diagnosed with third degree atrioventricular block, hypertension, and depression.
“We’re living in a nightmare,” Sarah Rosenkranz says, sitting at a barbecue restaurant in downtown Granbury on an evening in May. 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.
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