EPA Releases 2002 Toxic Release Inventory: Right-to-Know Compromised
The
June 29 edition of the Watcher, the newsletter of
OMB Watch, has an article about the public release of Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory data and publications. The article notes:
While EPA posted the TRI data online, it no longer publishes a full Public Data Release (PDR), which includes
easy-to-understand overviews of the data, detailed analysis, and supporting tables and information. Additionally,
EPA no longer makes the companion State Fact Sheets report available in hard copy; this tool provides state-bystate
data summaries, maps and other information.The PDR serves as the official governmental figures on toxic releases. It is used by a large segment of the public
through libraries and other avenues. It has been printed and widely disseminated each year since inception of
the TRI program, in compliance with legal requirements to produce an annual report. For the first time ever in
the TRI history, EPA is downsizing the PDR from the two-volume report, spanning hundreds of pages, to a sixpage
report.EPA claims the public can access the same information previously available in PDRs from the online data. Not
only is this a complicated and arduous task, but much of the information from the PDR cannot be obtained
through the online services offered by EPA. Moreover, given there are updates to the TRI data throughout the
year, there will be no “official” figures to use for comparative purposes. Thus, any future analyses will likely be
criticized because numbers are unlikely to match in any two research efforts.
The Right To Know Network has
published an easy-to-use
version of the data.