What You Don't Know Does Hurt:
EPA Proposes Cutting Information on Toxics Release

EPA recently announced plans to dismantle the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), our nation's premier tool for notifying the public about toxic pollution releases. The TRI program tracks the amount of toxic chemicals released into the air, land and water by 24,000 U.S. industrial facilities. The information enables citizens to understand the risks to their communities and press companies to reduce their pollution. But EPA is placing corporations ahead of community safety with enormous rollbacks in TRI reporting.

Why are they doing this? Despite the success of this reporting program, EPA claims the rollbacks are needed to reduce the paperwork burden on corporations.

EPA has proposed three changes, each of which would leave citizens in the dark about dangerous pollution in their communities. First, EPA wants to cut the annual program in half by eliminating every other year of reporting. Second, changes will allow companies to pollute ten times as much before being required to report details about how much toxic pollution was produced and where it went. Third, the rule changes will permit facilities to hide information on the production of small amounts of persistent bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs), even though these chemicals are highly dangerous even in small quantities because they persist in the environment and build up in people's bodies.

A bipartisan group of Senators has called on EPA to leave the existing program in place. EPA will now consider this advice and other public comments, and issue a final decision.