Toxic Release Inventory

What is the Toxic Release Inventory?

In 1986, the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) was enacted. Through EPCRA, Congress mandated that a Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) be made public. Section 313 of EPCRA specifically requires manufacturers and other industry groups (see Who Must Report) to report the chemicals manufactured or used in the identified facilities and the annual amount of these chemicals released and otherwise managed in on- and off-site waste management facilities. Facilities are required to submit reports for more than 650 designated toxic chemicals. The reports are submitted to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and state governments.

Facilities are required to report releases of toxic chemicals to air, water, and land. In addition, they need to report off-site transfers for treatment or disposal at a separate facility. Facilities are also required to report on pollution prevention activities and chemical recycling. Reports must be submitted on or before July 1st each year and must cover activities that occurred at the facility during the previous calendar year.

Who Must Report?

Section 313 of EPCRA required that reports be filed by owners and operators of facilities that meet all of the following criteria:

Standard Industrial Classification Code (SIC Code)
Originally, TRI reporting requirements were limited to the manufacturing facilities with major SIC code groups 20 through 39. In 1997, USEPA added seven additional industry sectors to the TRI requirements. These sectors started submitting reports for the reporting year 1998.

Number of Employees
The number of full time employees must be 10 (or the equivalent of 20,000 hours of work per year) or more.

Threshold Quantity
Any facility that manufactured or processed more than 25,000 pounds or otherwise used more than 10,000 pounds of a listed toxic chemical during the course of the calendar year is required to submit a report. Starting with the reporting year of 1995, the USEPA introduced an "alternate threshold" for facilities with low total annual reportable amounts. Facilities that have total annual reportable amounts of 500 pounds or less of listed chemicals and do not use annually more than one million pounds are eligible for the alternate threshold option. Eligible facilities have the option of reporting on a simplified two-page short form referred to as Form A and not using the longer Form R. This threshold does not apply to the PBT (persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic) chemicals.

When and Where to Report

Toxic Release Inventory reports are filed every year with USEPA and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. The reports submitted by the facilities are due by July 1 for the preceding calendar year. The data from the reports are entered into the USEPA database. After data quality checks, USEPA makes the information available to the public. TRI data and information are made available in a number of ways to assist the widest range of users. TRI Explorer is a searchable online database which lets users quickly get information about releases and transfers and other waste management activities - no database knowledge is required. The annual Public Data Release (PDR) contains fact sheets, trend information, and the State Data Files. The State Data Files are designed to minimize the amount of coding necessary to get release, transfer, waste management and other information on submissions for a specific reporting year. In addition, raw data is available by request on CD. The TRI Data Quality Program describes the activities undertaken by EPA to insure that the data are of the highest possible quality.

Information Collected Under TRI

Facilities report the amounts of toxic chemicals released on-site, the amount of chemicals transferred off-site, production-related waste management information, and facility and chemical identification. The following specific information is required:

Facility identification information - name, address, TRI facility identification (ID) and location data
Name and telephone number of contact person
Environmental permits held
Amount of each listed chemical (see TRI Chemicals) released to the environment at the facility
Amount of each chemical sent from the facility to other locations for recycling, energy recovery, treatment, or disposal
Amount of each chemical recycled, burned for energy or treated at the facility
Maximum amount of each chemical present on-site at the facility during the year
Types of activities conducted at the facility involving the toxic chemical
Source reduction activities

On-site releases are considered to be the amount of TRI chemicals released at the facility (within the facility property limit). Amounts transferred to other sites are not included in this category.

The amount of TRI chemicals released off-site is the amount transferred for disposal off-site. Transfer to Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs) of metal and metal compounds are considered off-site releases. The amount transferred to another TRI facility is excluded from the off-site release category if the receiving facility reports this amount as an on-site release under its TRI report.

TRI Chemicals

There are currently over 650 individually listed TRI chemicals and chemical categories. USEPA added new chemicals in the 1990, 1991, 1994, and 1995 reporting years. USEPA also has delisted (removed from the list) and modified reporting requirements for certain chemicals. For an alphabetical list of current TRI chemicals and chemical categories please refer to the USEPA TRI Chemicals webpage. Reporting facilities are required to use data from monitoring and emission measurements in calculating releases being reported in their TRI reports. When such data are not available, reasonable estimates may be used from published emission factors, material balance calculations, or engineering judgments.

TRI Data Use

TRI information can help to identify the presence of toxic chemicals within communities and can provide ways for the public to work with industries to reduce the hazards associated with these chemicals. TRI data also serve as a tool for measuring toxic chemical uses and releases. TRI data can be used by industry to identify problem areas, establish reduction targets, anticipate costs associated with procurement and disposal of toxic chemicals, and monitor progress of pollution prevention programs. Federal, state, and local governments can use TRI data to evaluate existing environmental programs or to target new environmental initiatives.

In the early years of the TRI program, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) entered the data received from TRI facilities into its own database. This database was used to prepare the annual Toxic Release Inventory report and was made available to the public. The EPA has also been maintaining a database of TRI submissions and has recently made this available to the public through its website. To avoid duplication of effort, DEC now relies on the EPA database and no longer prepares a state report. Anyone who wishes to review the TRI data for New York should obtain it from the EPA's TRI Explorer website. The EPA's Toxic Release Inventory Public Data Release Report summarizes national TRI data.

TRI Regulatory History

Section 313 of Federal Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA), enacted in 1986, requires manufacturing and other facilities meeting the employee criteria (equivalent of 10 full-time employees) to report the chemicals manufactured or used in the facilities under the Toxic Release Inventory. In addition, the annual amounts of these chemicals released and managed in on- and off-site waste programs are reported. Only manufacturing facilities within Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) Codes 20 through 39 were required to submit TRI reports. The reports are submitted to United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) and state government. The reported data are maintained in a publicly available database by USEPA.

The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 expanded TRI to include additional information on toxic chemicals in waste and on source reduction methods. Beginning in the reporting year 1991, facilities were required to report quantities of TRI chemicals in recycled wastes, wastes combusted for energy recovery and wastes treated on- and off-site.

In 1993, about 30 chemicals, including certain Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) chemicals and certain hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), were added to the TRI chemical list.

In 1994, EPA added 286 new chemicals and chemical categories to the TRI list. This expansion added more than 150 pesticides and certain chemicals specified under the federal Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act.

In 1997, USEPA added seven sectors to the industries required to submit TRI reports: metal mining, coal mining, electrical utilities that combust coal and/or oil, hazardous waste treatment and disposal facilities, chemical wholesale distributors, petroleum bulk station and terminals, and solvent recovery services.

In 1999, the USEPA published a final rule under section 313 of the Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) which lowered the TRI reporting thresholds for persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic (PBT) chemicals and added seven chemicals and two chemical compounds to the TRI list.

In 2001, USEPA issued a final rule under section 313 of Emergency Planning and Community Right to Know Act (EPCRA) which lowers the TRI reporting thresholds for lead and lead compounds. EPA's TRI website has further information on the rule and a fact sheet on lead.

PBT Chemicals Rule

PBT chemicals include substances such as mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) already on the TRI list, and dioxin and dioxin- like chemicals which were among the chemicals added for the 2000 reporting year. The final rule includes lowered reporting thresholds for PBT chemicals and also includes modifications to certain reporting exemptions and requirements for the chemicals newly subject to the lower reporting thresholds. The first required reports under this PBT Chemical Rule were submitted by facilities for the reporting year 2000. Additional information on the PBT chemical rule can be found at: www.epa.gov/tri

The PBT chemicals are of particular concern not only because they remain in the environment for long periods of time and are not readily destroyed (i.e., they are persistent), but they also build up or accumulate in body tissue (i.e., they bioaccumulate). Relatively small releases of PBT chemicals can pose human and environmental health risks. Consequently, these chemicals warrant recognition as potential health threats.

A total of 155 facilities reported PBT releases in reporting year 2000. Of these facilities, 37 did not report under the TRI program in 1999.

2000 NYS TRI Report Summary

According to the most recent TRI data for the reporting year 2000, 737 facilities submitted 2,2505 Form R reports (long form), and 425 Form A reports (short form) in New York State. Of these facilities, 155 reported under a new requirement the release of PBT (persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic) chemicals. The reported releases from these facilities are summarized as follows:

Emissions to air: 33.3 million pounds or about 55 percent of the total releases
Surface water discharges: 8.99 million pounds or about 15 percent of the total releases
On-site land releases to RCRA Subtitle C Landfills: 5.81 million pounds or about 10 percent of the total releases
Other on-site land releases: 2.52 million pounds or about 4 percent of the total releases
Off-site releases (transferred off-site for disposal): 9.96 million pounds or about 16 percent of the total releases
PBT Chemicals: 557,069 pounds released to air, water and land combined (or less than 1% of the total TRI releases).

The total combined releases from the originally reporting and newly reporting industries decreased from 71.81 million pounds in 1999 to 60.54 million pounds in 2000 - a reduction of 15.7 percent.

Fugitive air emissions increased from 3.75 million pounds in 1999 to 3.90 million pounds in 2000 - an increase of 3.79 percent.
Stack air emissions decreased from 32.64 million pounds in 1999 to 29.43 million pounds in 2000 - a reduction of 9.83 percent.
Surface water discharges decreased from 9.83 million pounds in 1999 to 8.99 million pounds in 2000 - a reduction of 8.55 percent.
Land releases decreased from 15.63 million pounds in 1999 to 8.33 million pounds in 2000 - a reduction of 46.73 percent. The majority of this reduction was due to the fact that Zinc Corporation of America did not report for zinc releases in 2000 (they did report in 1998 and 1999) due to recent issues with TRI definitions concerning extraction and beneficiation in mining. EPA's response to the National Mining Associates lawsuit is provided on their website.

TRI Reports

2000 New York State TRI Report (PDF, 57 KB, 17 pages)
1999 New York State TRI Report (PDF, 546 KB, 19 pages)
1998 New York State TRI Report (PDF, 423 KB, 82 pages)
1997 New York State TRI Report (PDF, 350 KB, 88 pages)

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