Project

Tracking Pollutant Releases and Transfers in North America

Status: Active
Operational Plan: Initiative

The CEC’s North American Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (NAPRTR) Initiative promotes public access to data and information reported by industrial facilities in North America, in order to improve understanding of the sources and management of pollutants of common concern across the region and support decision-making relative to pollution prevention and reduction.

Begun in 1996, the NAPRTR Initiative has been a cornerstone of the CEC’s work on pollutants and environmental health. Efforts are focused on adding value to PRTR data through their integration, analysis and dissemination via the Taking Stock report series and Taking Stock Online, featuring a searchable database and web tools. The data are reported by industrial facilities to the three national PRTRs in North America: Canada’s National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI); Mexico’s Registro de Emisiones y Transferencia de Contaminantes (RETC); and the United States’ Toxics Release Inventory (TRI).

Throughout the years, the Taking Stock report has featured special analyses of release and transfer data and information relating to specific sectors or pollutants, with additional context about PRTR reporting to provide insights for decision-making.

Via Taking Stock Online, users can explore release and transfer data from approximately 30,000 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.

On a regular basis, the public meeting of the NAPRTR Initiative brings together a wide range of stakeholders to share information relating to industrial pollution and access to information. Through the CEC, the national PRTR programs are also engaged in ongoing collaboration to implement the Action Plan to Enhance the Comparability of Pollutant Release and Transfer Registers in North America.

The significant result of these efforts is the ability to provide a more complete and accurate picture of industrial pollution across the region to support decisions at all levels about pollution prevention and industry sustainability.