Section 313 of EPCRA generally requires facilities at which toxic chemicals are manufactured, processed, or otherwise used to report annually to EPA and the states on, among other things, releases of these substances. The requirement applies to facilities with 10 or more full-time employees in specified industries that exceed the chemical reporting thresholds specified in the act. EPA makes the data in the TRI available and accessible to the public in various formats, including a computerized database on the Internet. The Pollution Prevention Act of 1990 expanded the information collected in the TRI to include data on the industries’ efforts to reduce pollution at its source and on recycling. EPA has further expanded the TRI by, in November 1994, requiring reports on additional chemicals and, in May 1997, requiring reports by additional industrial groups. In October 1996, EPA also announced that it was considering an expansion that would require industries to report the amounts of toxic chemicals entering a facility, transferred into products and waste, and leaving the facility. This concept has been referred to as “materials accounting” or “chemical use data.” EPA expects to propose a rule on this requirement in 1998. The TRI currently contains data on the amounts of over 600 chemicals that have been emitted to the environment (the air, water, or land) and/or transferred off-site as waste. Although this information on a nearby facility’s releases provide some indication of potential risk to human health and the environment, local communities also need information on the chemicals’ toxicity—the degree of danger to animal or plant life—and the extent of their exposure to the releases to more fully understand the risks. Even the most toxic chemicals do not cause harm to an individual unless sufficient exposure occurs. More specifically, comprehensive risk information includes data on (1) what chemicals have been released, how, where, and in what amounts; (2) what toxicities are associated with exposure to each chemical and how toxic that chemical is; and (3) who has been exposed to the chemical and how often, to how much, and for how long. The TRI’s information on the amount of releases represents estimated aggregate amounts for a full reporting year. Additional details on the duration or timing of these releases would be needed to more fully understand the risks. For example, a chemical release may be more severe if the releases are concentrated over a short period, rather than occurring in smaller amounts over an entire reporting year. Almost from the start of the TRI program in 1987, EPA has been asked by communities and other users to expand the inventory to provide them with more information on the risks posed by the chemical releases. More recently, in its April 1995 report on EPA, the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) recommended that the agency add risk factors to the TRI. According to NAPA, the TRI is a useful, but incomplete, tool to inform the public and company officials about toxic releases. NAPA said that, by linking risk information to the inventory’s chemical reports, businesses would have an incentive to reduce the most hazardous emissions first. Under section 312 of EPCRA, employers must annually submit a hazardous chemical inventory form to designated state and local emergency planning organizations, as well as local fire departments. The form generally contains information regarding the amount of hazardous chemicals present at a facility, by category, as well as their general location. The designated recipients of the inventory form may request more detailed information, such as specific chemical identities and exact locations, from individual facilities. The public may generally obtain information submitted under section 312, although the exact locations of chemicals must be withheld under certain circumstances. While section 313 of EPCRA requires TRI reporting on the emissions of over 600 chemicals by approximately 22,000 facilities, section 312 of EPCRA requires reporting on thousands of hazardous chemicals that are present at an estimated 868,500 manufacturing and nonmanufacturing facilities. In September 1997, EPA announced, as one of its strategic goals, the expansion of the public’s right to know about the environment. In addition, EPA announced, as a principle to guide senior management’s decision-making and priority setting, that agency actions should maximize public participation and community right-to-know efforts. In making this announcement EPA stated its intent to empower state, local, and tribal governments and the American public by providing citizens with information to help them make informed decisions regarding environmental issues affecting their communities. To do this, EPA said that it would expand the content of its databases, improve the data’s quality and usability, and make the data widely available through the Internet and other sources. Although EPA does not have any plans to expand the TRI to include information on the human health and environmental risks posed by toxic chemical releases, the agency has three projects under way that will provide communities with substantially more data on nearby facilities, the relative toxicity of their chemical releases, and the potential exposure to the releases. Two of these projects—the Relative Risk-Based Environmental Indicators Project and the Cumulative Exposure Project—are efforts by EPA to use toxic release data and other information to improve the agency’s consideration of potential health and environmental risks in setting priorities and developing policies, primarily to identify specific chemicals, sources of chemical emissions, or geographic areas for priority action to reduce risks. The other project—the Sector Facility Indexing Project—provides information on the facilities and their environmental performance, including the amounts of their toxic releases and their history of compliance with environmental laws. EPA recognizes that these projects separately and collectively are not definitive assessments of risks to individual communities. Nonetheless, the projects could expand the information available to the public on the facilities and toxic releases in their areas. EPA’s plans to make the earliest of these projects—the Sector Facility Indexing Project—publicly available generated considerable concern on the part of industry and some states over the accuracy and appropriateness of the data for public use. EPA made substantial efforts to identify and correct the data’s inaccuracies and decided to delay including the information on the toxicity of chemical releases, which was controversial with industry and the states, before the project’s data were made available on the Internet in May 1998. Unless addressed first, similar issues about stakeholders’ involvement, the data’s accuracy, and how the information may be interpreted by the public are likely as EPA makes the results of other projects available to the public. For example, the toxicity information that EPA was considering for the Indexing Project is a component of the Relative Risk-Based Environmental Indicators Project. According to TRI program officials, EPA has no plans to expand the data in the TRI to incorporate toxicity and exposure information. The officials said that, when the Congress was considering the passage of EPCRA, the issue of whether the TRI should contain risk information was debated and it was decided that information on the amounts of toxic releases, which are referred to as hazard information, would be sufficient. The officials further stated that the TRI has worked well in encouraging industry to reduce toxic releases and that it is not practicable to develop and add the information that would be needed to provide the public with accurate assessments of the risks from TRI releases in specific communities. In its annual summary reports of TRI releases, EPA has added discussions on the potential health and environmental effects of the covered chemicals and on the factors involved in assessing risks. General information on the use and the potential effects of chemicals is also available from various other sources within and outside EPA. For various toxic chemicals, the agency is preparing fact sheets that describe how they are generally used, how exposure to them might occur, what happens to them in the environment, and how they affect human health and the environment. The information needed to assess risks is often not available. Data on the amounts, the durations, and the methods of individuals’ exposure to chemicals is generally limited, and little is known about the toxic effects of many of the chemicals used in commerce. According to EPA, for 43 percent of the chemicals produced in high volumes, no data from tests on their basic toxicity currently exist. In April 1998, Vice President Gore directed EPA to proceed with the Chemical Right-to-Know Initiative, which is to accelerate the collection and dissemination of information about widely used chemicals to which people, especially children, may be exposed. Major aspects of the initiative involve getting industries to provide more complete test data on chemicals that are produced in high volumes and to perform additional testing for chemicals that children are most likely to encounter as well as having EPA review persistent chemicals that accumulate in body tissues to determine whether these chemicals should be subject to TRI reporting or to lower thresholds for reporting. The Sector Facility Indexing Project, which was initiated by EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance in 1995, provides extensive information through the Internet on over 600 facilities in five major industries: (1) auto assembly; (2) iron and steel production; (3) petroleum refining; (4) pulp manufacturing; and (5) primary smelting and refining of aluminum, copper, lead, and zinc. The project consolidates information that has been available to the public through different data systems, publications, and several places on the Internet. For each facility, the project provides information on its location, production or production capacity, surrounding populations, and permits held under major environmental programs; the number of inspections received; its record of compliance with federal regulations; and any chemical releases, spills, or transfers off-site. According to EPA, facilities can use this project to compare their data against those of similar facilities or simply to monitor their own regulatory performance. Government agencies can use the information as a planning tool, for example, to identify facilities for assistance in complying with regulations. Environmental and community groups will have easier access to information that they can use to learn about the environmental performance of facilities near them. EPA plans to evaluate the project and may then expand it to include other industry sectors and more types of data.