REply: What is "TRI" information?

[Fred Stoss <fstoss@acsu.buffalo.edu>]

Toxic Chemical Release Inventory (TRI)

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986,
known as Title III of the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization
Act (SARA) of 1986 established a mechanism to inform citizens of
chemical hazards existing in their local communities. The Toxic
Chemical Release Inventory (TRI) was established by SARA to provide
a comprehensive database of chemicals used by specified industrial
sectors. Industries are required to provide EPA with data about
their estimated releases of toxic chemicals into air, water, land
(landfill), and underground injection. Required facility information
is reported on Form-R.

The EPA is the lead agency for handling TRI resource
<http://www.epa.gov/tri/>. The EPA maintains a directory of state
TRI contacts at <http://www.epa.gov/tri/statecon.htm>. This list
provides point-of-contact information (agency name, address, phone,
fax, and email information and name of person responsible for
response). Contacts provided by the EPA are the parties to whom
correspondence should be addressed for obtaining copies of Form R,
which are the individual facilities' TRI reports submitted to EPA.

There are no Internet WWW sites provided from  this EPA state
directory. EPA Regional TRI Coordinators are found on a list at
<http://www.epa.gov/triinter/regional.htm>.

Environmental Defense's Scorecard, http://www.scorecard.org, is a
private and extremely popular source for local community environmental
information searched by zip code or interactive maps. Scorecard
provides TRI information profiles for 6,800 chemicals. Scorecard
also provides additional links to other government documents (ATSDR,
CDC, NCEH, etc.) and information and data resources and provides
an extensive collection of local environmental information.

The Right-to-Know Network (RTKNet) provides another means to locate
TRI information by zip code, city, county or state.  Additional
TRI resources are also available from RTKNet <http://rtk.net/>.