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Toxic Chemical
Release Reporting
INTRODUCTION
At midnight on December 2, 1984, citizens of Bhopal, India, awoke with a burning
sensation in their lungs. The local Union Carbide pesticide plant had an accident;
an estimated 42 tons of methyl isocyanate gas was released from a holding tank.
The resulting plume exposed more than 500,000 people to varying concentrations
of the toxic chemical, with the result that at least 3,787 died within 72 hours and
additional thousands subsequently died from gas-related diseases. Shortly thereafter,
there was a chemical release at a sister plant in West Virginia.
These events resulted in demands by industrial workers and communities for
information on hazardous materials stored in and released from industrial plants
in their communities. Public interest and environmental organizations around the
country accelerated demands for information on toxic chemicals being released outside industrial facilities.
The response in the United States became known as the Emergency Planning and
Community Right-to-Know Act (EPCRA) of 1986. EPCRA was enacted to facilitate
emergency planning by local agencies, to minimize the effects of potential toxic
chemical accidents, and to provide the public with information on releases of toxic
chemicals in their communities.
A significant requirement of EPCRA was that users of certain toxic chemicals
annually report their releases of these chemicals to the land, air, and water. This
information is compiled into the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). At first, the requirement was applied to chemical industries, but this has been expanded to other industry
groups that use these toxic chemicals. TRI is a database available to the public; it contains detailed information on toxic chemical releases by individual industrial facilities.
The TRI program has been amended by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 and
is administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Originally, federal
facilities were exempt from the requirement, but President Clinton, on August  3,
1993, signed Executive Order 12856, Federal Compliance with Right-to-Know Laws
and Pollution Prevention Requirements, which removed the exemption and required
all federal facilities to comply, regardless of industrial classification.
BASIS FOR PROGRAM
Facilities that manufacture, process, or use toxic chemicals above specified amounts
must report annually on disposal or other releases and other waste management
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