Our Planet

Toxic 100 Air Pollutors

Courtesy of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts we can see at a glance which corporations as the major air polluters. Reserachers at PETI took the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and factored in information that the TRI does not calculate or weigh to generate the Toxic 100 list. This list gives consumers and shareholders an idea of which companies are contributing the most toxic pollutants into the atmosphere and potentially affecting the most people.

The TRI data from the EPA fail to give a complete picture of the extent to which a corporation may be polluting the air and the scope to which this pollution affects populations. The PERI report accounts for:

• Differences in toxicity of various released chemicals—the degree of toxicity varies greatly among chemicals. The TRI only reports total pounds of chemicals released where as the PERI report compensates for the differences in toxicity of the chemicals. The same weight of two chemicals can have toxicities that differ by orders of magnitude.

• The magnitude a chemical release by factoring in differences in numbers of people affected by facilities upwind of large urban areas versus those located in more remote areas.

• The total releases by each corporation—the TRI data provide information on the basis of individual facilities.

You can view the Toxic 100 at:

http://www.umass.edu/peri/programs/development/toxic100table.htm

In addition, you can search for detailed reports for specific corporations at:

http://www.umass.edu/peri/programs/development/toxic100search.htm

This information empowers the public to participate in the environmental policy-making making process.