PHOTODISC
For the first time, Europeans can access data on industrial releases of potentially harmful chemicals into air and water. The information is available at a pollutant register on a website run by the European Commission (EC) and the European Environment Agency. Meanwhile, the U.S. EPA, which currently sponsors the most comprehensive national emissions inventory, known as the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), is contemplating options for reducing industry’s annual reporting burden. Launched at the end of February, the new environmental database, known as the European Pollutant Emission Register (EPER), includes information on 50 pollutants released during 2001—the first reporting year—by nearly 10,000 large and medium-sized industrial facilities operating in the European Union (EU). Categories include heavy metals, pesticides, industrial chemicals, dioxin
Information about the toxic emissions from industrial facilities like this chemical plant in Aberdeen, Scotland, is now available on the Internet.
byproducts, and greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide. Although reporting thresholds vary for each pollutant, they have been designed to account for 90% of total emissions from the facilities covered, according to EC officials. EPER is not as comprehensive as the pollutant release and transfer register that the EU agreed to last year under a United Nations (UN) treaty (Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003, 37, 134A), which covers 86 substances, adds land releases and waste transfers, and requires annual reporting. The second EPER report, which will cover 2004 releases, isn’t scheduled until 2007. But after that, EC officials say they expect to have an expanded EPER in line with the UN protocol. “We are now bringing the first proposals forward on this,” says Bernd Mehlhorn, the desk officer in charge of EPER with the EC’s environment directorate. Environmentalists say that despite EPER’s current limited scope, it is a “huge step forward” and will help pressure industry to reduce and better control its emissions. “You have to understand that for many countries in the EU, this sort of information will be available online for the first time ever,” says Mary Taylor, a chemicals campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe. The data can be grouped by pollutant, activity or industrial sector, air or water emissions, or by country. Likewise, detailed information is available for individual facilities. If companies fail to report the required data, the EC, for now, will rely on pressure from the public or competing facilities to force compliance, Mehlhorn says. If that too fails, the EC could consider bringing the member state in which the particular facility is located before the European court of justice. “For us, the member states are responsi-
News Briefs Clean Air Act report card The Clean Air Act has helped improve air quality over the past 30 years, but more can be done, finds a National Research Council committee after a two-year study of the U.S. EPA’s air quality management program. Implementing the act resulted in cap-and-trade programs and significantly reduced several pollutants, including those from motor vehicle emission sources, but needs still exist to meet newly mandated standards, understand health risks and the effects of pollutants, address environmental justice, and tackle the issues of multistate and international transport of air pollutants. The committee encourages EPA to continue current air improvement programs but recommends that the agency target groups of pollutants rather than individual ones and protect ecosystems, not just people. For more information on Air Quality Management in the United States, go to www. nas.edu.
Voluntary goals set Twenty of the 54 companies that have signed up with the U.S. EPA’s Climate Leaders program have now set greenhouse gas reductions targets, according to the agency. The two-year-old program serves as a key component of the Bush Administration’s alternatives to mandatory greenhouse gas reductions. The reductions to which the companies have committed go beyond the expected rate of improvement in their respective energy sectors, EPA claims. The nonbinding reduction goals set through the program include a pledge by American Electric Power, one of the nation’s largest power producers. For more information, go to www.epa.gov/climateleaders.
APRIL 1, 2004 / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY ■ 121A
DIGITALVISION
EU and U.S. plan changes in reporting toxics
