Protect Lake Michigan News

Illinois Would Lose Pollution Data from 207 Chemical Facilities

As the new home of Illinois PIRG's environmental work, Environment Illinois can be contacted with any questions regarding this news release.

CHICAGO– A new analysis of a proposed Bush Administration rule reveals that residents of Illinois would lose valuable information about the amounts and type of harmful chemicals discharged by industrial facilities in their neighborhoods if the rule is finalized.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson proposed changes to the Toxics Release Inventory Program (TRI) in October 2005 that would significantly decrease the information that the public and state and local officials have about harmful chemicals released into Illinois’s water, air, and land.

“The TRI gives communities the information they need to protect themselves from dangerous toxic pollution, and has been recognized as a very successful strategy for reducing toxic releases through public accountability,” stated Frances Canonizado, Illinois PIRG Environmental Advocate. “The Bush Administration’s rollback allows companies to keep more of their toxic pollution secret from their neighbors.”

In Illinois, the local impact could be widespread. Analysis of the 2003 Toxics Release Inventory by Grassroots Connections and the National Environmental Trust showed that:

• 207 facilities would no longer be required to report toxic chemical releases to the public;
• Illinois would lose all information about releases, transfers, and disposal of cadmium for example, which has been linked with cancer and is a known developmental and reproductive toxin; and
• Specific communities in Illinois will be most affected. Communities in 27 zip codes will lose all the pollution information about chemical releases in their neighborhoods and 268 other zip codes will lose a portion of the pollution information reported. Of the communities that would lose 100 percent of their reports, nine of them are in Cook County, three in McHenry, two in Lake, and one in DuPage.

“People deserve to know what they are breathing and what the government is allowing corporations to put in the air we all breathe. Many of the chemicals covered by this program can damage the lungs, send people to the hospital, and cause cancer,” said Brian Urbaszewski of the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago. “That the EPA is trying to hide information the public now uses should make people question who the federal government is really trying to protect.”

In October 2005, EPA Administrator Johnson proposed to cut the amount of pollution information that companies are required to disclose. These changes to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) would be three-fold:
• A rule to propose that companies be allowed to release ten times as much pollution before they are required to report their releases;
• A rule that would allow companies to withhold information about some of the most dangerous chemicals, such as lead and mercury;
• A notification to Congress that Administrator Johnson intends to release a rule next fall to change the frequency of reporting to the program from every year to every other year.

The TRI program is a pollution disclosure program. Since 1987, companies have been required to report toxic releases to air, land, and water, as well as toxic waste that is treated, burned, recycled, or disposed of. Approximately 26,000 industrial facilities report information about any of the 650 chemicals in the program.

The TRI program was established in 1986, two years after a devastating chemical accident in Bhopal, India. December 4th marks the twenty-first anniversary of this accident, where thousands of people immediately lost their lives from exposure to chemicals, and tens of thousands have since died from continued contamination. Soon thereafter, Congress passed and President Reagan signed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA), which established the Toxics Release Inventory.

"What we don't know about toxics in our neighborhoods can and will hurt us. We learned this so graphically 21 years ago in Bhopal and again just days ago in China and Russia,” said Lionel Tripanier of the South Metro Greens. “Toxic disasters could happen here too, and if we do nothing today we will most certainly suffer tomorrow. Let's keep the TRI spot light on these toxic chemicals near our homes, schools, and places of work and worship."

"Knowledge is Power and when a community loses that knowledge it loses the power to be on a level playing field with companies and industries,” said Kim Wasserman of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, a local group that has benefited from TRI data. “We lose the ability to use information to create pollution control programs and reduce the pollution affecting many of our communities today."

Other groups at the press conference have either used TRI data in the past or are hoping to use it to shed light on the problems they are experiencing in their neighborhoods. One such group is Imagine Englewood if… They are currently working to track lead levels in an area near the Nicholson Elementary School and are worried about the impacts of lost information to their efforts.

The Toxics Release Inventory has been credited with a wide range of successes. Since the TRI program began, disposals or releases of the original 299 chemicals tracked have dropped nearly 60 percent. A U.S. PIRG Education Fund analysis showed that releases of chemicals linked to health effects have decreased as well. Between 1995 and 2000, releases to air and water of chemicals known to cause cancer declined by 41 percent.

EPA’s own research has shown that the public, companies, governments, academics, and investment groups have all used the TRI program. In 2004, Pilsen residents living near the H. Kramer & Co. smelter used EPA TRI data to show that the polluter was at the time one of the worst emitters of airborne lead in Illinois and in the country. "The TRI database provided the facts to support what community members had suspected for years--that a toxic polluter was located dangerously near their homes," said Dorian Brueur of the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization known as PERRO. "Without the TRI database, we would never have been able to get the city's attention."

A May 2003 report by EPA highlighted twenty different state governments that use the TRI program for environmental targeting, risk assessments, regulations, legislation, quality assurance and control, and other uses. Here in our state, the Illinois EPA and the Illinois Department of Public Health both benefit from the TRI program.

“The TRI program has proved that requiring polluters to report their pollution creates an incentive for these facilities to reduce their pollution,” said Canonizado. “But the Bush administration wants to take this spotlight off polluters and leave the public and our communities in the dark about pollution in our state.”