It's no longer just an annoyance. Secondhand smoke
exposes us to known carcinogens.
Tom Houston, American Medical Association
Environmental Health Perspectives, November 1996
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines "cigarette" as "a small roll of finely cut tobacco for smoking, usually enclosed in a wrapper of thin paper." Cigarette companies are changing this definition as they redesign the cigarette to avoid the odor and pollution caused by environmental tobacco smoke (ETS). Meanwhile, they are also competing with pharmaceutical companies for smokers as these companies develop their own nicotine delivery systems designed to help addicts kick the habit.
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Help with the habit. A variety of new products are designed to ensure fewer smokers and healthier air.
Photo credit: R. J. Reynolds and Philip Morris |
For would-be quitters, nicotine delivery systems including gum and the patch are now joined by a nicotine inhaler, a nasal spray, and two new low-smoke cigarettes. These devices are equally effective, roughly doubling the likelihood of success of quitting to about 30%, says Dietrich Hoffmann, associate director of the American Health Foundation, a Valhalla, New York-based research organization devoted to the prevention of chronic and environmentally induced disease. These devices work by reducing withdrawal symptoms, which helps sustain smoking abstinence. They may also provide some of the benefits that smokers obtain from cigarettes, such as good mood and ability to pay attention, thereby reducing the smokers' dependence on cigarettes.
None of these systems would be likely to be addictive to current nonsmokers who might try them, due to the low dose of nicotine delivered. Some former smokers, however, have been unable to shake their dependence on smoking cessation devices even after years of use. No matter, says Michael Cummings, a senior research scientist at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Maryland. The dose of nicotine such devices deliver is too small and delivery is far too slow to contribute to heart disease as cigarettes do. And nicotine is not considered carcinogenic. Even a lollipop would be a reasonable nicotine delivery device, says Cummings, who advocates "nicotine without guilt."
In addition to the nicotine delivery devices, one antidepressant, bupropion (marketed as Zyban), has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for smoking cessation. In a large, double-blind, placebo-controlled study published in the 23 October 1997 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, 300 mg/day of bupropion raised the quit rate of smokers to 23.1%, as compared to 12.4% for the placebo group.
These new smoking cessation options are important not only to smokers, but also to the public health. From 1990 through 1994, an average of 181,000 smokers died annually from cardiovascular disease attributable to their habit. Another 155,000 people succumbed to cancers, and respiratory diseases took yet another 91,000 lives, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC estimates the death toll from lung cancer due to ETS to be 3,000 annually. Other sources put the number of all illnesses caused by ETS at 50,000, says Gary A. Giovino, chief of the epidemiology branch of the CDC.
Low-smoke cigarettes greatly reduce ETS, and one of them may mitigate smoking-related adverse health effects. A smoker seeking to quit can choose between two low-smoke cigarettes currently on the market--R. J. Reynolds's Eclipse and Philip Morris's Accord. In the Eclipse, a carbon tip heats a mixture of tobacco and glycerin, instead of burning tobacco. Particles of glycerin transport nicotine into the lungs. The Accord is a smoking system that uses Philip Morris's new electronic puff-activated lighter in combination with specially manufactured cigarettes to burn the tobacco only when the smoker inhales.
The levels of cigarette toxins in the Eclipse are much lower than in conventional cigarettes, says R. J. Reynolds spokesman Seth Moskowitz. In vitro tests including genetic toxicity and cytotoxicity assays, Ames tests, and sister chromatid exchange were either negative or very marginally positive, says Moskowitz. Animal inhalation studies and mouse skin-painting studies also suggested that the Eclipse is comparatively benign, he says.
This is not necessarily so, says John L. Pauly, a cancer research scientist in the department of immunology at the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, who found that the mouthpiece and a package of Eclipse cigarettes were contaminated with fragments of the glass fiber that is used to insulate the lighter tip. Pauly's study, published in the November 1998 issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers, and Prevention, found 95% of Eclipse filters to be contaminated with 5-55 glass fibers. (In contrast, none of the regular cigarettes used as controls were contaminated with glass fibers.) Furthermore, experiments using smoking machines demonstrated that the fibers would likely be ingested or sucked into the lung.
Like asbestos, the glass fibers are probably physical carcinogens, says Pauly. Macrophages, which would normally move on after successfully eliminating foreign particles, persist in their attack on these inert particles. This persistence damages the local epithelium and probably eventually activates oncogenes and deactivates tumor suppressors. Asbestos causes malignant mesothelioma, and the glass fibers probably do likewise, says Pauly.
"The glass contamination problem is serious enough that I would recommend that [the Eclipse] be withdrawn immediately from the market," says Cummings. "However, I believe that this is a correctable problem, in which case an improved Eclipse-like product might be worth promoting as an alternative to smoking a conventional cigarette."
Nicotine and carbon monoxide, the major constituents of cigarette smoke responsible for heart disease, are delivered to the lung by the Eclipse in levels comparable to those in conventional cigarettes, says Jack E. Henningfield, vice president of research and health policy at Pinney Associates, a consulting firm specializing in tobacco control and smoking cessation based in Bethesda, Maryland. However, several other compounds that contribute to heart disease, including hydrogen cyanide, nitrogen oxides, cadmium, and zinc, are absent from the Eclipse.
Although the Eclipse does not eliminate ETS, it reduces it by about 80%, according to Moskowitz. Furthermore, he claims that what smoke there is, is benign and dissipates quickly compared to smoke from conventional cigarettes.
The Philip Morris Accord is specially manufactured for use in the puff-activated lighter. Each puff activates one of the lighter's eight sets of coils, in sequence, singeing the cigarette's surface to generate smoke. Between puffs, there is no combustion, somewhat like turning the engine off every time the car stops. The Accord's combustion temperature--only 950°F, compared to a conventional cigarette's 1,650°F--significantly reduces the amount of chemical given off in two-thirds of the species emitted, as compared to a conventional cigarette, according to Mary Carnovale, Philip Morris's manager of media affairs. In particular, carbon monoxide is reduced by 94%, benzene by 98%, benzo-a-pyrene by 98%, and tobacco-specific nitrosamines by 83%. The lower level of carbon monoxide released from the Accord would help to reduce the danger of heart disease. Sidestream smoke, the smoke that comes off the tip of a burning cigarette, is virtually absent from the Eclipse, and there is very little ETS.
Critics suspect that the Accord is less toxic than the Eclipse, "but it's all speculation," says Hoffman. He cautions that testing of smoking cessation devices has been done only by the manufacturers, without input or oversight from the FDA.
The overall public health impact of low-smoke cigarettes depends on several unpredictable factors: how many people will switch from conventional cigarettes to low-smokes, how many will switch who would otherwise have quit, and whether low-smoke cigarettes will attract new smokers who otherwise would have refrained. Cummings sees the low-smoke cigarettes as a way for tobacco companies to encourage smokers to keep puffing in the wake of workplace bans. Such bans, he says, have greatly encouraged quitting, because people find they can live without cigarettes. Based on the results of a study published in the Summer 1997 issue of Tobacco Control, a journal of the British Medical Association, Cummings estimates that if all work sites in the United States were to ban smoking, an additional 178,000 smokers would quit, and those who continued to smoke would consume 10 billion fewer cigarettes annually. "This led us to conclude that the tobacco industry has a big financial stake in developing products that attempt to reduce ETS, while at the same time keeping smokers addicted to nicotine," he says.
Despite this conclusion, Cummings sees the potential for banning conventional cigarettes if replacements are available that satisfy addicts' cravings, and if the FDA can gain regulatory control over tobacco products. Cigarette companies are believed to be developing other cigarette-like devices, and Cummings foresees a plethora of new, potentially safer products on the market in the next decade.
Currently, the FDA is attempting to gain jurisdiction over cigarettes and smokeless tobacco products, claiming that they are nicotine delivery devices, and therefore fall under its control. This claim is based on the tobacco companies' manipulation of nicotine levels, says Scott Ballin, an independent tobacco and health policy consultant. In addition, internal memos from Philip Morris state that the company is in direct competition with pharmaceutical firms. But cigar and pipe tobacco are exempt from this claim because no evidence has surfaced that companies have manipulated levels of nicotine in those products.
The FDA's effort to gain jurisdiction has been challenged by tobacco companies in a case that is expected to go the U.S. Supreme Court in 1999. The FDA's acting commissioner, Mitch Zeller, refused to comment on these matters.
With average global temperatures predicted to rise by as much as 6.5°F by the year 2100 under current patterns of energy consumption, is it really too soon to consider new ways to do business? Not according to the Climate Change Task Force of the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD). On 27 October 1998, the task force submitted to President Clinton seven principles for the design of an early action program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Greenhouse gases act as a blanket surrounding the earth--a blanket that grows thicker and warmer with continued emissions.
The United States currently produces about one-quarter of annual global greenhouse gas emissions; an early action program could augment current U.S. efforts to reduce them. In a letter to President Clinton, the task force wrote that an early action program would also improve economic performance and reduce local environmental pollution.
The task force is made up of a diverse group of representatives from government, industry, and environmental groups. Martin A. Spitzer, PCSD executive director, says, "The important thing about these principles is that the public thinks that no one agrees on anything [regarding the environment], but this diverse group actually agrees--the middle ground is one where we are prudent and take steps with everyone's participation."
The seven principles for early action were devised as a means to guide the White House and commercial enterprises in developing policies regarding early action, and were designed to allow for the possibility that the United States could agree to limit its greenhouse gas emissions in the future. The principles call for appropriate incentives to spur early action; broadly based participation by government, industry, academia, nongovernmental organizations, communities, and individuals; learning, innovation, flexibility, and experimentation in creating new ways to reduce emissions; formal credit for greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts; accountability for producing emissions; compatibility with other climate protection strategies; and government leadership.
Efforts to catalyze voluntary early action come at a time when progress is slowly being made in fleshing out the details of an international agreement to limit greenhouse gas emissions. At the fourth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in late November 1998 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the United States became the sixtieth nation to sign the Kyoto Protocol. This treaty, which has not been ratified by the U.S. Senate, calls for industrialized nations to reduce their overall emissions of six greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012 by at least 5% below 1990 levels.
Critics of the Kyoto Protocol claim that efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would drive out of business many U.S. companies whose livelihood depends on the combustion of carbon-based products. But not everyone agrees with that prediction, even in industry. BP Amoco, the third-largest oil company in the world, announced in September 1998 its intention to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade by 10% below 1990 levels, 3% lower than the amount set for the United States under the Kyoto Protocol. BP Amoco's action plan calls for increased investment in solar technology, additional energy efficiency measures, and participation in joint implementation projects with developing nations to reduce or offset their greenhouse gas emissions. In cooperation with the Environmental Defense Fund, BP Amoco also established a pilot program to reduce emissions using emissions trading. BP Amoco hopes to expand its photovoltaic energy business 10-fold over the next decade. In January 1998, the company opened its first U.S. plant to produce its innovative Apollo thin film photovoltaic panels in Fairfield, California.
Kenneth E. Blower, director of environment, health, and safety for BP Amoco in New York, worked with the PCSD to develop the early action principles. He sees the opportunity to take early action as an important incentive for industry. "It's a new issue," he says. "You need to integrate this issue into business planning processes." He adds that BP Amoco plans to freely share what the company learns as it moves ahead with reduction efforts. "This is a business issue for BP Amoco," he says, "and it's [also] just the right thing to do."
Legislation prompting early action was proposed during the last Congress. In October 1998, Senators John Chafee (R-Rhode Island), Joseph Lieberman (D-Connecticut), and Connie Mack (R-Florida) introduced the Credit for Early Action Act, an incentive-based law that would reward companies and other organizations for voluntarily reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. Earned credit could be applied against any future emissions reduction obligation enacted by Congress. These credits could also be used domestically in an emissions trading plan in which participants can buy emissions credits to meet their reduction commitments, or sell credits if their reductions turn out to be higher than mandated. The senators expect to reintroduce the legislation in the current session of Congress.
The seven early action principles are part of an extensive report by the PCSD that will be submitted to President Clinton later this year. This report includes a number of recommendations to further progress toward sustainable development while tackling the challenge of climate change, developing a new environmental management framework, revitalizing metropolitan and rural communities, and furthering U.S. leadership in the international arena.
The United States consumes more than 25% of the world's resources with only 5% of the world's population. By far, the single largest U.S. consumer is the federal government, which spends $200 billion on goods and services as well as an additional $240 billion on grant disbursements every year. With this immense purchasing power, the federal government is in a position of unequaled influence when it comes to encouraging the development of environmentally friendly products to push sustainability into the next century.
In 1993, the Environmentally Preferable Purchasing (EPP) program was developed within the Office of Prevention, Pesticides, and Toxic Substances at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The program encourages and assists federal executive agencies in considering environment--along with price and performance--when making purchasing decisions. The Clinton administration coined the term "environmentally preferable" to describe products and services with a lesser or reduced effect on human health and the environment.
The EPP program is an indirect result of the administration's 1993 Executive Order 12873, which directed federal agencies to enact environmentally preferable purchasing policies with the help of the EPA--a commitment that was reaffirmed by Executive Order 13101 in 1998, which called for an increase in the federal government's use of environmentally preferable products and services, including recycled products.
In the five years since its inception, the EPP program has spawned a series of successful pilot projects. Among these are a collaborative effort with the General Services Administration to develop a framework for identifying and comparing environmentally preferable cleaners, a Department of Defense initiative to use environmentally preferable products in the maintenance and repair of its Washington, DC, parking lots, and an EPA effort to construct buildings using materials that balance cost, function, and environmental impact.
Officials at the EPP program hope that expanded federal purchasing of environmentally preferable products will follow the release of a long-awaited report, Interim Final Guidance on Environmentally Preferable Purchasing, later this year. The guidance includes a prioritized list of product categories in which agencies are encouraged to focus their EPP efforts. Areas of particular interest for expansion include computer reuse and disposal programs and the use of nontoxic paints and adhesives. Balancing divergent stakeholder views on what "environmentally preferable" means took three years and is seen by EPP program manager Eunsook Goidel as no small achievement. "It's difficult to define what 'environmentally preferable' is, and there is not a lot of information on the subject," she says. To prepare the guidance, EPP staffers reviewed comments from over 90 stakeholders and capitalized on the experience gained through the pilot programs. The guidance is designed to help agencies steer their way through the environmentally friendly product marketplace by providing them with a set of guiding purchasing principles that take into account factors such as pollution prevention, global versus local impacts, and life-cycle perspective.
Much to the chagrin of some agency purchasing officials, the EPP program has limited its efforts to providing guidance on environmental attributes, rather than producing a list of specific products or manufacturers. Says Martin Durbin, associate director for federal and international affairs at the American Plastics Council, a Washington, DC-based trade association, "There's no problem with the idea of using environmentally preferable products. The devil is in the detail--how you define the specific criteria. Most purchasing officials don't have time to perform an extended analysis. Understandably, it's easier for them to have a list of things they should buy, which puts the EPP [program] in the position of picking winners and losers. To their credit, they didn't do that."
Some companies that have invested in environmental product development have seen their profits rise handsomely in response to EPP initiatives. "Without a doubt, the biggest growth has been in our green program," says Stephen P. Ashkin, vice president of Rochester-Midland, a specialty chemicals manufacturer. However, Durbin maintains that difficulties still exist in establishing a clear flow of information from manufacturers and EPP program staff to the often bewildered purchasing officials at the end of the line. Goidel is hopeful that the soon-to-be-released guidance, as well as the environmental considerations that are now incorporated in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (as she describes it, a "bible to purchasing officials"), will help in this respect.
Meanwhile, the concept of EPP is getting some strong congressional support. A bipartisan group of senators led by Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), recently requested a $4 million budget increase for the program from the Office of Management and Budget. Harkin, who advocates increased use by the federal government of agricultural by-products as substitutes for synthetic materials such as inks, lubricants, and adhesives, has also called for the creation of an interagency environmentally preferable products coordinating council to coordinate product identification and information dissemination.
According to Goidel, state governments are instituting programs similar to the EPP program, and international interest in the U.S. experience is growing. "Many companies are excited about the trend [toward environmentally preferable products]," she says. "Other companies could lose market share unless they change their products as well. We're encouraging environmental concerns as well as price and performance. Companies that optimize all three will be the winners."
The evidence continues to mount that environmental tobacco smoke (ETS), also known as secondhand smoke, affects more than just smokers. The May 1999 issue of Environmental Health Perspectives Supplements brings much of this evidence together as it delves into the various health, risk assessment, and quantification aspects of ETS exposure.
The issue contains the proceedings of a workshop held in Baltimore, Maryland, in September 1997 that examined the occurrence of ETS in the workplace. Contributing authors had conducted reviews in their areas of expertise with the goal of developing a risk assessment for worker exposure to ETS.
Roger A. Jenkins and Richard W. Counts of Tennessee's Oak Ridge National Laboratory reviewed the use of personal exposure assessment in two recent studies on occupational exposure to ETS. Personal exposure assessment uses an individual sampling device to gather contaminant samples from each subject's breathing zone.
The first study examined subjects both at work and away from work, fitting them with strap-on sampling devices. Workers in facilities where smoking is permitted were found to be exposed to 10-20 times more ETS than those who worked in places where smoking is banned. Workers in facilities with smoking and nonsmoking sections were exposed to 2-8 times less ETS than workers in facilities where smoking is permitted throughout. However, all the exposures were generally found to be much lower than those estimated in earlier studies.
The second study examined waitstaff and bartender exposures to ETS on the job, using sampling devices similar to those in the first study. The median level of ETS exposure in a single-room bar was found to exceed that in a multiroom establishment by a factor of 10. Still, Jenkins and Counts concluded that, while some occupational groups are exposed to more ETS than other groups, even the most highly exposed subgroup studied (bartenders working in single-room bars) is not exposed to levels as high as those estimated in a 1994 ETS risk assessment published by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
Other scientists feel that biomarkers provide the best means for quantifying exposures to ETS. Neal L. Benowitz, a professor in the division of clinical pharmacology and experimental therapeutics at the University of California at San Francisco, wrote of how the nicotine metabolite cotinine works as a sensitive, specific biomarker for human exposure to ETS. Cotinine is one of the most frequently used biomarkers for quantifying ETS exposure because its presence in the body is almost exclusively due to exposure to tobacco. Other biomarkers have been proposed for use in measuring ETS exposure, but some, such as carbon monoxide, are not specific to tobacco and may occur in response to a variety of other exposures or even through the body's own metabolic processes. Still other proposed biomarkers, such as solanesol, are difficult to accurately measure.
Still, cotinine's validity has been challenged. Critics have argued that people are exposed to nicotine not just through smoking but also through foods such as black tea and tomatoes. Benowitz countered that levels of dietary nicotine reported in earlier studies are unrealistically high. To take in the amount of dietary nicotine attributed in one 1991 study to drinking black tea, for instance, the subject would have to have drunk about four quarts of the beverage per day.
Another criticism is that cotinine levels may be influenced by exposures occurring in the absense of ETS, such as walking into a room where someone previously smoked. According to Benowitz, such situations are a trivial source of nicotine exposure; using a calculation method he described in his paper, the amount of nicotine taken in from such sources would result in a urine cotinine concentration of as little as 0.1 ng/mL, over 75% lower than that expected of a nonsmoker exposed to ETS in a smoky bar.
In his EHPS paper, Neil E. Klepeis of the department of environmental health sciences at the University of California at Berkeley took a look at smoke itself. He reviewed three recent studies on how ETS pollutants actually move and mix in the air, and reanalyzed data from several other published studies of ETS. Klepeis said the typical approach of assuming perfect mixing of pollutants and of equating a person's ETS exposure with a measurement at a single point in a room may not always be an accurate representation of actual ETS exposure.
Klepeis demonstrated how running means can be used to determine the averaging, or mixing, time that is required before ETS exposure measurements taken at any one point in a room will be within 10% of the spatial room mean. Based on data collected in a residence, a tavern, and smoking lounges, Klepeis concluded that averaging times ranging from 12 to 80 minutes (depending on the environment) appear to be sufficient.
Averaging times need to be considerably longer for environments where many smokers are present, such as in a bar or party, than for environments where one smoker lights up a single cigarette. Starting with the case for a single, brief ETS source, Klepeis presented a method for estimating appropriate averaging times in multiple-smoker environments by treating overlapping smokers as a continuous source of ETS.
The April issue is rounded out with papers that examine alternate methods for assessing exposure to ETS, investigate mathematical models for predicting indoor air quality from smoking activity, and explore issues in ETS exposures in the workplace.
When it is discovered that a toxicant in the environment may pose a threat to human health, a multitude of questions arise. People in the affected community want to know if they could have been exposed to the toxicant, and if so, whether they may get sick from the exposure, and how to avoid any risk the toxicant might pose. Physicians and epidemiologists need current information on how to diagnose and treat diseases related to exposure and whether or not there are populations at special risk to the particular chemical. Scientists and regulators must react quickly to appraise the potential danger and take effective action.
TOXNET, a large and evolving group of databases on toxic chemicals and their effects, provides officials with the information they need to make fast and accurate decisions. TOXNET was created by the National Library of Medicine and made available to the public in 1985. Access to TOXNET is free through the TOXNET home page located at http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov.
One popular file on the TOXNET system is the Hazardous Substances Data Bank (HSDB), one of four databases available by following the Toxicology Data Search link on the TOXNET home page. For each toxic chemical in the database, the HSDB contains facts on substance identification, manufacturing and use, chemical and physical properties, safety and handling, toxicity and biomedical effects, pharmacology, environmental fate and exposure, standards and regulations, and other information used to assess the human health risk posed by the chemical. The data contained in the HSDB are collected from authoritative texts on toxic chemicals, including reports and monographs by organizations such as the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the World Health Organization, the American Council of Government Industrial Hygienists, and both federal and nonfederal agencies. To ensure the accuracy of the information, the data are evaluated by a scientific review panel, a group of nonfederal scientists with expertise in areas including chemistry, toxicology, pharmacology, and environmental fate. Information that has been reviewed by the panel is marked as peer-reviewed in the database.
The HSDB can be searched by entering a chemical name, Chemical Abstracts Service registry number, or subject on the Toxicology Data Search page. Clicking on the database name on the top of this page allows users to search three other similar TOXNET databases as well (the HSDB is selected by default). One of these databases, the Integrated Risk Information System, is a factual file maintained by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the carcinogenic and noncarcinogenic risks of chemical exposures. The system contains benchmark doses, describes the effects of exposure, and gives detailed descriptions of toxicological studies of the chemical performed prior to January 1998. The other two databases available under the Toxicology Data Search link are the Chemical Carcinogenesis Research Information System and GENE-TOX. These resources provide succinct summaries of mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and genetic toxicology studies done on specific toxicants.
A search of any of these four databases will provide an abbreviated list of matching records. Pull-down menus at the top of the results page give users the option of viewing the full records on screen, having the results e-mailed directly to them, or having them provided via FTP.
In addition to the information available on these databases, TOXNET also provides several databases of health-related literature citations, which can be accessed by selecting the Toxicology Literature Search link on the home page. The Developmental and Reproductive Toxicology database contains citations for studies published after 1989 on birth defects and developmental effects of toxicants. The Environmental Mutagen Information Center contains citations for studies published since 1991 on the genotoxic activity of chemical, biological, and physical agents. Each of these bibliographic databases has an associated archive of earlier citations. The search results from these databases contain full abstracts for most studies.
For broader literature searches, TOXNET also provides a link to Internet Grateful Med, the online interface to the National Library of Medicine's broad collection of bibliographic databases. By following this link, users can not only continue searching for toxicology-related literature in Grateful Med's TOXLINE database, but can also search MEDLINE, AIDSLINE, BIOETHICSLINE, or eleven other health-related databases.
While the information available through these literature databases may be helpful for doctors and scientists who need to evaluate and control the health effects of a toxicant, it cannot answer questions concerning where the toxicant comes from and how it enters the environment. However, the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) database, which is also available through TOXNET, can help answer such questions. The TRI is reports made by industries to the EPA that estimate how much of each toxicant industrial facilities release into the environment each year. Recently, information on reduction and recycling of chemicals has also been included in these reports. Following the Toxic Releases Search link on the TOXNET home page brings users to a form that allows them to search through past years' TRIs, limiting their results by chemical name, registry number, facility name or number, parent company name, state, county, city, amount of release, and environmental medium (air, land, water, or underground injection).
The TOXNET site effectively organizes and presents the enormous amount of information that has been generated on toxic chemicals and their effects. When it comes to addressing public health risks, TOXNET can save time and effort, and that may help save lives.
Last Updated: April 15, 1999