Toxics Release Inventory (TRI)

After 2,000 people died in a disastrous chemical accident in Bhopal, India, in December 1984, Congress passed a bill called the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, or EPCRA.

The 1986 law was designed to inform the public of the presence of chemicals that are manufactured and "otherwise used" by industry and to provide information about routine releases of a long list of other chemicals. The mechanism for reporting this data is known as the Toxics Release Inventory, or TRI.

Before 1997, only certain manufacturing companies — like chemical, petroleum, paper and metal companies — were required to report their emissions as part of TRI. But in 1997, the government expanded the scope of the program to include seven new industries and increased the number of covered chemicals to 630. The industries now covered by the program include electric utilities, like Ameren, that use coal and/or oil to generate electricity in their power plants.

To comply with the new standards, in the summer of 1999 Ameren reported to the federal government its 1998 emissions of certain substances from its power plants. Ameren’s TRI data is now posted annually on the Environmental Protection Agency's Web site.

Ameren’s TRI site provides helpful context for understanding this data.

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