WASHINGTON -- America's largest toxic polluters during 2000 were hard-rock mining companies and coal-burning power plants, responsible for nearly two-thirds of the chemicals that industry says were released into the nation's air and water.
Toxic chemicals spewed into the U.S. environment declined 8 percent from 1999, from 7.7 billion pounds to 7.1 billion pounds, the Environmental Protection Agency said Thursday.
EPA Administrator Christie Whitman said the data can provide a powerful tool for the agency and citizens alike to identify pollution in communities and make decisions how to protect the environment.
But critics said the EPA's annual Toxics Release Inventory [TRI] focuses on chemicals that industry says were released into the environment, not the entire amount produced. Jeremiah Baumann, environmental health specialist for U.S. Public Interest Research Group, an advocacy group, said the huge increase in the amount produced is significant because more toxic waste escapes into the environment than is accounted for.
In 2000, the amount of chemicals that industry reported as waste from production rose to 38 billion pounds, an increase of 26 percent over the nearly 30 billion pounds in 1999.
Of the 7.1 billion pounds reported as having been released into the environment, mining of gold, silver, uranium, copper, lead, zinc and molybdenum accounted for 3.4 billion pounds released while coal-burning electric generating plants caused another 1.2 billion pounds.
Four mining states, Nevada, Utah, Arizona and Alaska, had the highest volume of toxic releases: Nevada with 1 billion pounds; Utah, 956 million pounds; Arizona, 744 million pounds; and Alaska, 535 million pounds.
The same four states headed the list in 1999 and 1998, the first year in which mining wastes were calculated in the EPA report.
"We end up reporting a lot of naturally occurring metals that are in the rock," said Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association.
President Bush's home state of Texas ranked fifth for toxic releases, based on reporting by manufacturers. During 2000, the last year Bush was governor, the state released 301.5 million pounds of toxic pollution, or nearly 11 percent of all the releases reported by manufacturing industries nationwide, according to the EPA.
The latest inventory was expanded to include eight new toxic chemicals, including dioxin. It also includes new reporting requirements for 20 other chemicals such as mercury and PCBs that are worrisome in even small amounts because they persist and accumulate in the food chain.
EPA officials said the annual inventory should be used as a guide and not necessarily an indicator of health risk because the report provides no information on exposure or specific toxicity of the chemicals.
But some say the inventory -- a huge, time-consuming project for EPA -- isn't as helpful as it could be, since it contains information about pollution from a year and a half ago.
"EPA should do everything in its power to get the data out in real time so that residents know the real risks they face today," said Carol Andress, an economic development specialist for Environmental Defense, a New York-based advocacy group.
EPA Toxic Release Inventory: www.epa.gov/tri
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