Health/Toxics: Air Pollution

The Bush Administration has adopted regulations that will dramatically roll back Americans' right to know about chemical hazards in their neighborhoods, allowing California industries to handle almost 600,000 pounds of toxic chemicals a year without telling the public, according to an investigation of federal data by Environmental Working Group (EWG).

For more than 20 years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) program has required industrial facilities to report the release, disposal, incineration, treatment or recycling of 650 chemicals covered by the law. Comprehensive TRI reporting has been required for facilities that handle at least 10,000 pounds a year or manufacture 25,000 pounds per year, and discharge or dispose of at least 500 pounds per year of the listed chemical.

But just before Christmas, the EPA gutted the TRI by sharply raising the detailed reporting threshold so that only releases of at least 2,000 pounds of chemicals will be subjected to detailed reporting. Facilities that don't meet the threshold must only indicate that they use a chemical. The agency adopted the rollback over the objections of more than 122,000 American citizens, corporations, government agencies and others who wrote in to protest the change.