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We greatly appreciate your interest in taking action to restore the public’s right to know about toxic pollution. The letter has been sent to the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. We are no longer accepting signatures. If you would like more information about environmental right-to-know issues, please click here.

Dear Administrator Jackson:

Congratulations on your confirmation as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. We look forward to working with you toward our shared goals of protecting public health and the environment.

On behalf of the XXX undersigned organizations, we are writing to urge the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse a set of changes to the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) finalized in December 2006 by the Bush administration. The changes have made it more difficult for citizens to track toxic pollution in their neighborhoods and take steps to reduce the impact on their family's health.

In 1986, Congress created TRI in response to the catastrophic release of toxic chemicals at a Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India that killed thousands of people. For nearly 20 years, TRI has been an essential tool in alerting communities, workers, first responders, and public health officials to the presence of chemicals and has provided critical assistance in dealing with highly hazardous situations.

To restore this important program, we, the undersigned, urge the EPA to return the reporting thresholds to the levels prior to the implementation of the December 2006 rule. We urge the EPA to settle the ongoing lawsuit with 13 states and invalidate the Toxics Release Inventory Burden Reduction Final Rule (71 Federal Register 76932-45).

By weakening the TRI program:
  • Companies may produce ten times the amount of toxic wastes before detailed reporting is required.
  • The most dangerous class of chemicals-Persistent Bioaccumulative Toxins (PBTs) can be exempted from detailed reporting for the first time ever.
  • Ten percent of communities with TRI reporting facilities (922 communities) may lose all numerical data on toxic pollution.
  • Numerous toxic chemicals will lose all or a majority of detailed reports being filed, leaving the program in violation of the original statute's requirement that any threshold change retain a substantial majority of releases of chemicals.
The final rule announced in December 2006 was opposed by public health and environmental organizations, governmental agencies in 23 states, the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and more than 122,000 individual public commenters. In May 2005, the House of Representatives voted to block EPA from implementing the TRI rollbacks, but the Senate was unable to consider a similar measure before EPA finalized the changes. Moreover, the state attorneys general of New York and twelve other states have sued the agency to reverse the rollback.

The TRI program has undoubtedly prevented many dangerous, and even deadly, chemical exposures and accidents. Emergency responders, researchers, workers, public health officials, environmentalists, community residents, and federal and state officials routinely rely on TRI. Publication of TRI data has motivated companies to cut pollution. From 1998 to 2003, TRI documented a 2.8 billion pound reduction in the annual release and disposal of toxic chemicals.

We urge EPA to restore this successful and cost-effective public health and safety resource. To follow up on this letter, please contact Liz Hitchcock at U.S. PIRG, at 202-546-9707 or elizabeth@pirg.org.

We look forward to working with you to ensure that people have the information they need to protect their health, their families and their environment. Thank you for your consideration.