EPA says US toxic chemical releases fall 9 percent
Date: 27-May-02
Country: USA
The annual report from EPA showed the toxic releases in 2000, the latest year for which data are available, totaled 7.1 billion pounds and were down 48 percent since 1988.
Approximately 27 percent of the chemicals were released into the air, 4 percent in water and 69 percent affected land.
As in previous years, the metal mining industry accounted for a substantial portion of all chemical releases, about 47 percent or 3.4 billion pounds.
However, the mining industry's toxic releases decreased 14 percent from 1999.
Toxic releases from manufacturing industries accounted for 32 percent of all releases or about 2.3 billion pounds, a 2.6 decrease.
About 16 percent of the toxic releases were from electric utilities, which totaled 1.15 billion pounds and fell 3 percent from 1999.
Details on the EPA's toxic release inventory data can be found on the agency's Web site at http://www.epa.gov/tri/.
Users can analyze toxic releases by facility, chemical or industry and at county, state or national level.