Unprecedented access provided for the first time
WASHINGTON – As part of Administrator Lisa P. Jackson’s commitment to increase public access to information on chemicals, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has added more than 6,300 chemicals and 3,800 chemical facilities regulated under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) to a public database called Envirofacts.
“The addition to Envirofacts will provide the American people with unprecedented access to information about chemicals that are manufactured in their communities,” said Steve Owens, assistant administrator for EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. “This is another step EPA is taking to empower the public with information on chemicals in their communities.”
The Envirofacts database is EPA’s single point of access on the Internet for information about environmental activities that may affect air, water and land in the U.S and provides tools for analyzing the data. It includes facility name and address information, aerial image of the facility and surrounding area, map location of the facility, and links to other EPA information on the facility, such as EPA’s inspection and compliance reports that are available through the Enforcement Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. EPA is also adding historic facility information for another 2,500 facilities.
EPA has conducted a series of aggressive efforts to increase the public’s access to chemical information including reducing confidentiality claims by industry and making the public portion of the TSCA inventory available free of charge on the agency’s website. EPA intends to take additional actions in the months ahead to further increase the amount of information available to the public.
More information on Envirofacts [1]
More information about EPA’s efforts on increasing transparency on chemical information [2]