Toxics Release Inventory

What is the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)?
The TRI gives citizens information about toxic releases in and around their communities.  With this information citizens can encourage mining companies to reduce their toxic releases and/or agree to more vigorous oversight of their mines.

Established in 1986 by the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) and administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), TRI requires industrial facilities to annually disclose to the public the amount of pollutants they have discharged into the air, water, and land or transferred to other sites for incineration, recycling and disposal.

The Mining Industry is the Nation's Top Toxic Polluter
Since the hardrock mining industry started reporting its releases in 1998 (TRI releases are published 2 years after they reported, i.e. 1998 releases were made public in 2000), the TRI has shown that hardrock mining industry is the largest toxic polluter in the United States, by far. In 2004, the mining industry released 1.1 billion pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment.

Mining Companies Fight to Hide Their Toxic Releases
Mining industry lawyers have fought to eliminate and/or reduce the public's right to know about mining's toxic releases ever since the mining industry was required to report.  Although industry has not succeeded in keeping the public entirely in the dark, they have won a limited exemption for certain kinds of mine waste.

For More Information

• EPA's TRI site:
  Provides access to TRI data through the user-friendly TRI Explorer interface. It also provides downloadable files of the entire TRI, as well as background information about the legal underpinnings and status of TRI.
• Environmental Defense's Scorecard:
  An extensive map based site that provides national, state, and regional (by zip code) breakdowns of TRI data including comparisons among geographic areas.
• Right-To-Know Network:
  Is a metadatabase run by OMB Watch that provides independent access to the TRI database as well as other environmental databases.
• US Public Interest Research Group Right-to-Know site: Contains links to recent PIRG RTK reports and action alerts.