| Querétaro, Mexico, 29/07/1997 – The Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC) today announced the first integrated study of US, Canadian, and Mexican inventories of toxic chemicals released into the North American environment. The report, Taking Stock: North American Pollutant Releases and Transfers, was presented to participants at a meeting on government-administered pollutant reporting programs in the Western Hemisphere.
The CEC study, which responds to growing concern over the effects of chemicals on public health and the environment, is intended to provide the public with a clearer understanding of the pollutants being released into the air, water and land in North America. It also examines the quality of environmental information included in corporate annual reports, and may serve as a model for other regions in the process of integrating data on pollutant releases and transfers.
The CEC report analyzes 1994 data (made available to the public last year) from national databases in Canada (the National Pollutant Release Inventory) and the United States (Toxics Release Inventory) and also profiles the pollutant release and transfer register pilot project in Mexico. Pollutant release and transfer registers provide detailed data on the types, locations and amounts of substances of concern released on-site and transferred off-site by industrial facilities.
This report is the first in a series of annual reports on pollutant releases and transfers in North America based on information brought together from existing publicly available information in the three NAFTA countries.
Key findings in the report include:
* Releases and transfers of toxic chemicals in North America are dominated by those from US facilities, except in the case of discharges to surface water, which are dominated by Canada.
* The report includes a list of the top 50 polluting facilities in North America. The chemical industry is the dominant industry for releases and transfers of toxic substances in North America, accounting for 28 of the 50 top polluting facilities in North America.
* Mandatory pollutant release and transfer data tell only half the story of the generation of toxic chemical wastes in North America. Reporting of transfers to recycling/reuse/recovery and to energy recovery is not required of all registers (Canada does not require such reporting, for instance, because these transfers are not considered waste), and yet the amounts that are reported equal the releases and transfers in the mandatory reporting categories. |
