US EPA begins releasing raw TRI facility report data

23 November 2004 21:47  [Source: ICIS news]

WASHINGTON (CNI)--The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) began public access Tuesday to facility-specific raw data on emissions reporting by US chemical and other industry sites under the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program.

 

EPA said in a statement that it is today opening public access for the first time to “facility information about toxic chemical releases as reported to the agency.”

 

Previously, chemical company reporting of toxic releases was held by EPA for an extended period while the reported data was quality-checked and analysed. The cumulative data was then released in EPA’s annual TRI report.

 

Starting today, EPA is allowing Internet-based access to the individual reports filed by reporting companies to EPA. The reports can be searched by location, chemical and company or facility name, among other parameters. The data files, termed by EPA as the Electronic-Facility Data Release or e-FDR, are available at an EPA Web site: http://www.epa.gov/tri-efdr.

 

EPA said it is making the raw reporting data available because “many stakeholders have requested that the agency share TRI data sooner and in the basic format received, without waiting for further analysis.”

 

Making the raw TRI reporting data available to the public, said EPA, is part of its initiative to modernize and streamline the TRI program.

 

Within e-FDR, the data is presented for each facility report received by EPA, with one reporting form for each chemical released.

 

Data in the new e-FDR covers facility-by-facility reporting for the reporting year 2003.

 

EPA said it will continue to publish its hard-copy TRI Public Data Release (PDR), which typically includes more quality checks on the reported data and details on national trends and analysis. The TRI PDR is scheduled for publication in second quarter 2005.

By: Joe Kamalick
+1 713 525 2653

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