2007 TRI Readme July 2009 update ------------- Record Counts ------------- Main07: 86,330 Reduce07: 86,330 Waste07: 86,330 Osite07: 110,795 Potw07: 74,393 Fac07: 52,395 Extra07: 2,979 ------------- Introduction ------------- The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) data contains information of on- and off-site releases and other waste management activities reported annually by facilities of certain industries, including federal facilities that meet certain thresholds. Facilities report to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and to states by submitting a TRI Reporting Form for each TRI chemical it has manufactured and processed. EPA's data tends to take a more national focus while state products may focus on more local and regional issues. The data from the 2007 report includes 86,330 reports in the main table - a steady decline in recent years. Each report is split up into the seven tables by disposal process. The data includes information on reporting facility, toxic chemical identity, waste treatment and recycling and environmental release activities. TRI data helps journalists identify facilities, chemicals manufactured, processed and used at the reporting facilities. The data also shows what happens to the chemical when it leaves the facility, like whether it is recycled, treated or released into the environment. There is some detail about where the chemicals are then sent. Information on one-time accidental releases is also included. Journalists could use the location fields to find out facility information and chemical release activities in certain communities. Facilities and sites can be mapped using the fields MAPLONG and MAPLAT. Although the data is not an exhaustive report on pollution, it is useful to track toxic chemicals. Joins: DOC_NUM is an exclusive number for each report, and you can join the tables with this field. The only table that doesn�t have this field is the facility table. Otherwise, TRIFID, CAS NUMBER, FACILITY NAME, ZIP CODE, PARENT COMPANY NAME are present in every table. Please note that the trifid is not recorded in the same format as it was in reporting year 2004. The number is a combination of zip, name and street address, and each piece used to be separated by a hyphen. Now there are no hyphens. We created a field called Nicar_id which can be used to link with the trifid field in earlier years. Many fields that contain facility and chemical information are duplicated in each table. For the 2005 data, the production index shows changes in how chemicals are disposed of. The record layout (States_Doc_2005_v05.pdf ) provided by the EPA is quite extensive. For the 2006 data, EPA added seven fields of NAICS codes in each table to identify the primary business activities of the facility. SIC code data, according to EPA, are �no longer collected but will be maintained for Historic Purposes.� Beginning with the 2007 data, EPA is using the slightly revised 2007 NAICS codes. For more information on the 2002 and 2007 NAICS code lists and their differences see http://www.census.gov/epcd/www/naics.html Any codes that are not explained, including NICAR-added fields, are referenced in nicar_layout_07.xls. Under TRI, a toxic chemical is considered to be managed as waste if it is released (including disposal), treated for destruction, burned for energy recovery, or recycled. It also includes any toxic chemical shipped off-site to another location for one of these waste management activities. Waste management includes: quantities disposed of in landfills both at the facility and sent off-site for disposal; quantities treated at the facility or sent off-site for recovery; and quantities recycled at the facility or sent off-site for recycling. The amount of chemicals in waste reported includes both waste generated and waste received by the facility. Production-related wastes do not include quantities reported as released to the environment due to one-time events. The EPA Web site has a Q&A section that has more information regarding the data in different years. Questions include why the number of federal facilities reporting to TRI increase while total releases reported decreased, and are federal facilities, such as Department of Defense military bases, complying with the TRI reporting requirements? Please take a look at the following link for more information: http://www.epa.gov/triinter/guide_docs/index.htm#qa. There are also several documents within this folder that were downloaded from the EPA Web site. They are listed at the end of this document. Industries required to report under EPCRA and the PPA (see explanation below) include manufacturing, metal mining, coal mining, coal and oil burning electrical utilities, hazardous waste treatment and disposal facilities, chemical distributors, petroleum bulk plants terminals, and solvent recycling operations. There are over 650 toxic chemicals and chemical categories on the list of chemicals that were required to be reported to TRI in 2005. The list and the threshold for when a report needs to be filled changes from year to year. You can find out more about this from several documents listed at the end of this readme. The database has some limitations. It doesn't include all toxic chemicals, industry sectors or sources of release and other waste management activities such as car emissions. Also, the TRI data reflects releases and other waste management of chemicals, not exposures of the public to those chemicals. Maplat and Maplong can help you determine where a reporting facility is in relation to rivers, aquifers and large populations. Congress passed the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) in 1986, and Section 311 and 312 of EPCRA requires businesses to report the locations and quantities of chemicals stored on-site to state and local governments. EPA and the states are required to annually collect data on releases and transfers of certain toxic chemicals from industrial facilities and make the database available to the public under Section 313 of EPCRA. The information that facilities are required to report to TRI was expanded under the Pollution Prevention Act (PPA) in 1990. For more information, please visit the EPA Web site: http://www.epa.gov/tri/ For information about TRI chemicals, go to http://www.epa.gov/TRI/trichemicals/index.htm, also for regulations and possible changes in how chemicals are treated in TRI reporting, go to http://www.epa.gov/tri/lawsandregs/index.htm. A facility must report to TRI if it meets the following three criteria: - Is in the manufacturing sector or, beginning in the 1998 reporting year, is covered by one of the following industry categories: metal mining, coal mining, electrical utilities, chemical wholesale distributors, petroleum terminals and bulk storage facilities, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) subtitle C hazardous waste treatment and disposal facilities, and solvent recovery services. Federal facilities must report to TRI regardless of their industrial classification; - Has 10 or more full-time employee equivalents, and - For all but certain persistent bioaccumulative toxic (PBT) chemicals, manufactures or processes more than 25,000 pounds or otherwise uses more than 10,000 pounds of any listed chemical during the calendar year. ------------------------- Tables and documentation ------------------------- BEFORE you begin, please look at the States_Doc_2007_v07.pdf It will explain a lot of changes. For the 2007 data, EPA added four new fields to each of the tables (except for the facility table), which are:- PUBLIC CONTACT EMAIL PUB_EMAIL C 32 REVISION CODE 1 REV_CD1 C 15 REVISION CODE 2 REV_CD2 C 15 METAL INDICATOR METAL_IND C 3 For the facility table, the EPA added only the following: PUBLIC CONTACT EMAIL PUB_EMAIL C 32 One important note about numeric values and calculations: NICAR decided to bring most fields in as text form, because occasionally those fields have text notes -- the most common is 'NA' -- interspersed among the actual numbers. Processing those fields as numeric values would have erased that information. That means, of course, that before doing any calculation on those fields, you should either (1) change the format, knowing that you might lose information, or (2) even better, if you are using Microsoft Access or similar software, use the VAL function. That function treats a character string as a numeric value. For example, in Access, the text fields could not do this: SELECT sum(dioxin1) from main07 But the same query would work using the VAL() function: SELECT sum(val(dioxin1)) from main07 - this will treat the text as numeric ---------------- List of Tables: ---------------- -main07.dbf: Each record represents a chemical report (either Form R or Form A in the documents provided) from a facility sent to the EPA. There is a separate report filled out for each chemical, so there may be multiple reports from the same facility. The document control number is a unique identifier of these reports - called doc_num - NOT trifid. Trifid is the field which contains a unique facility identifier. The doc_num field is useful, because sometimes facilities must make multiple reports because they deal with more than one TRI chemical. This table contains information about the facility and the chemical, as well as summaries of waste management processes the facility uses regarding the chemical. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id, dt_sign -reduce07.dbf: Each record represents one chemical report. This table duplicates much of the chemical and facility info from the main table. It also contains the "Source Reduction and Recycling Activities" data. It has info on how much of the chemical was recycled and where, including totals in pounds for all previous, current, and a projection for the next two years. Also, you can find out how much of the chemical was released as a result of catastrophic or one-time occurrences. In 2004 TRI did not include data for three fields related to the amount of toxics released previously, currently and projected. The three fields, all in the REDUCE table, are: Ttl_prev, Ttl_report and Proj_fol. NICAR never got an explanation for why. However, the data IS included in the 2005 and on tables. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id -waste07.dbf: Each record represents one chemical report. Again, the chemical and facility info is duplicated in this table. This table also contains information about waste treatment methods that occur on-site of the facility. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id -osite07.dbf: Each record represents an off-site location where facilities sent the chemical for waste treatment. The document control number is duplicated in many cases, meaning the same chemical produced by one company was sent to various locations. Again, the chemical and facility info is duplicated in this table. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id -potw07.dbf: Each record represents one chemical report to the EPA. Again, the chemical and facility info is duplicated in this table. The unique information this table has is about chemical transfers to Publicly Owned Treatment Works or POTWs. This data is a bit incomplete. It only has the first two POTWs the chemical was sent to. And the total amount of the chemical that was transferred to POTWs is stated, but there is no way to differentiate how much of the chemical was sent to each POTW. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id -fac07.dbf: Each record represents a facility that has reported TRI information. The last year the facility reported TRI chemicals is included. The information is up-to-date to the current year. It is the place to find contact names for the facilities. This table does not contain a document control number field to link with, so trifid should be used to link to the other tables. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id -extra07.dbf This table was new starting reporting year 2005. It contains "Additional Information on Source Reduction, Recycling and Pollution Control." It can be linked on the trifid or doc_num. NICAR added fields: maplat, maplong, nicar_id There are some changes from last year. Please see the NICAR record layout and the pdf file called States_Doc_2007_v07 for information detailing the changes. -------------- Lookup tables: -------------- - sic.dbf: SIC code assigned by the government explaining the type of company. - cas.dbf: A lookup of chemicals derived from the main074.dbf table; can be linked using the cas_num field in the other tables. - naics.dbf: NAICS code to identify the primary business activities of the facility. Starting reporting year 2007, EPA began to use the 2007 version of NAICS codes, which is slightly different from the previously-used 2002 version. -------------- Documentation: -------------- - nicar_layout_07.xls: Layout created by NICAR that includes information not in the EPA provided layout. Also, the field names appearing in the data sets and the EPA record layout are different. This provides the new field names. - States_Doc_2007_v07.pdf: TRI record layout and shows all changes to the fields. VERY important and useful. - Final_Form_A_03-06-08.pdf and Form Final_Form_R_03-06-08.pdf: Facilities must submit either one of these forms, depending on many factors. For a flowchart of which form should be submitted, see page 38 of 2007_reporting_instructions.pdf. - 2009_reporting_instructions.pdf: Detailed instructions referred to in the record layouts. Includes codes necessary to decipher data. - reporting_info_2007.pdf: Detailed information on who must report what and limitations of the data. - Key_Findings_2007.pdf: TRI's summary report on the data. Good for overall general view of the data. - 2003_data_uses.pdf: Who uses TRI and how. This might yield some story ideas, or at least get a better picture of what the data is capable of. - ChemListChanges05.pdf: An EPA listing of changes in reported chemicals in reporting year 2005. - RY2006ChemicalList.pdf: EPA list of chemicals for reporting year 2006. - Chem_ListofLists_2006.pdf and Chem_ListofLists_2006.xls: A list of chemicals and codes that may not require a TRI report, but may be hazardous. - 2007_public_data_release.zip: A report to help the public gain insight into and use the TRI data. - revise_2007.pdf: How companies can revise TRI submissions. - withdraw_2007.pdf: How companies can withdraw TRI submissions. - trade_secret_03.pdf: Trade Secret submission information - trade_secret_form.pdf: Trade Secret substantiation form - errata3.pdf: A description from the EPA: "EPA�s TRI Program implements data quality checks to identify potential facility reporting errors on their releases and waste management activities. When a potential error is identified, the facility is notified. However, a reporting error cannot be corrected in the TRI database until a certified revision or withdrawal is received by EPA. Users of TRI data should be aware that the database may reflect uncorrected facility reporting errors." - 2007_Definition_File.pdf: Definitions of the NAICS 2007 codes IRE Resource Center Materials Tipsheet 2770: Scott Streater provides tips for reporters who are working on environmental investigations. He explains how to find sources, get data and know open record laws. Streater also gives a list of helpful Web sites for reporters who are requesting records. Tipsheet 2616: Matthew Waite offers five tips for using CAR to investigate the environment. Waite says that the amount of environmental data available can be overwhelming; these tips are meant to help reporters stay organized, focus on the investigation and ask the right questions Tipsheet 2165: Provides a list of cues as to possible story ideas that might emerge from daily pollution data. Apart from giving links to some of EPA's Web sites Ken Ward Jr. also specifies the exact form of pollution that can be researched for stories. Story 21771, Kevin Walters: This investigation of a Hercules Inc. chemical plant showed a history of questionable environmental practices extending back decades, including the burial of drums of chemicals in the company's landfill, an EPA report noting more than 37 acres of contaminated soil, and a host of complaints from residents who feared their health had been compromised from the smoke and chemicals. Story 21436, from The Plain Dealer in Cleveland: According to the Toxic Release Inventory, Ohio is the fifth most polluted state in America. Toxic pollution levels actually went up in some counties from 1989 to 1990. In some cases, residents say the pollution is so bad they sometimes don't leave their houses. Other residents blame the pollution for the higher rate of respiratory problems and illness in their children. Contact the Resource Center at 573-882-3364 or e-mail rescntr@nicar.org to order reprints or tipsheets. You can search for additional stories and tipsheets from www.ire.org/resourcecenter.