Tracking Pollutant Releases and Transfers in North America

Healthy Communities and Ecosystems

In 1984, an industrial plant in Bhopal, India, released a toxic cloud of methyl isocyanate that killed thousands. Less than a year later, a chemical leak at a plant in West Virginia resulted in the hospitalization of six employees and over 100 local residents. Incidents such as these spurred demands for public information about the substances released to the environment by industrial facilities, and triggered community Right-to- Know movements around the world.

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As a result, many countries have established pollutant release and transfer registers (PRTRs), requiring facilities to report the amounts and types of pollutants they release to air, water and land, or transfer to disposal, recycling or other management.

The CEC’s North American PRTR (NAPRTR) project promotes public access to PRTR data to improve understanding of the sources and management of pollutants of common concern. It also promotes use of the data for priority-setting and decisionmaking to protect the health of North American communities and ecosystems, support chemicals management, and reduce pollution. North America has taken the lead in gathering and publishing PRTR data. Through a CEC-coordinated effort begun in 1995—which led to the creation of Mexico’s mandatory PRTR program in 2004—North American PRTR work has become a model for regional cooperation.

The NAPRTR project compiles and disseminates data reported by facilities to the three national PRTRs. Efforts are focused on adding value to the data through their integration, analysis and dissemination via the Taking Stock report and Taking Stock Online website. Incorporating information about the context of PRTR reporting, such as differences among the three programs, facilitates data use and interpretation. The Taking Stock Online searchable database allows users to explore pollutant releases and transfers from more than 35,000 facilities in North America, generate reports in a variety of formats; create maps and view them using Google Earth, and analyze PRTR data in the context of information such as locations of watersheds and population centers, using geospatial data from the CEC’s North American Environmental Atlas.

Documents: The Public Meeting of the North American PRTR Project, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Oct. 30-31, 2012
	Participant Feedback on Enhancing the Comparability of PRTRs in North America On 30-31 October 2012, 50 people from across North America gathered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the CEC’s annual public meeting of the North American PRTR Project.
	Meeting report on the Public Meeting of the North American PRTR Project On 30-31 October 2012, 50 people from across North America gathered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada for the CEC’s annual public meeting of the North American PRTR Project.