Toxic Right
to Know
Oregon Toxics Alliance is committed to achieving fundamental changes in the practices and policies that permit toxics use and contamination. Towards this goal, OTA recognizes the importance of citizens’ right-to-know laws.
Toxic right-to-know is based on the simple belief that all of us have the right to breathe clean air, live in areas free from toxic pollution, and consume safe food and water. In order to guarantee this right the public must have the ability to learn about toxic materials in their community. However, today industry is required to report less then 5% of its chemical use.
To understand this problem it is important to realize that there are over 72,000 synthetic chemicals currently in use today, with hundreds introduced each year. These chemicals are stored at factory sites, transported across the United States, put into consumer products, placed in storage sites, and released into the environment, where they are transported through our communities. Many of these chemicals have been shown to cause cancer, birth defects, and reproductive disorders.
In order to reduce this hazard toxic right-to-know is an essential tool. There are many reasons why public disclosure of toxic use is important:
1. Residents need to know what toxins are emitted into the environment they live in and whether the industries in their community are more or less polluting then similar industries in other communities.
2. The news media needs information in order to report accurately on public health and the environment.
3. The public and elected officials need complete and accurate information in order to evaluate the adequacy of existing pollution control laws and the effectiveness of the agencies that enforce these laws.
4. Emergency planners need information to plan for disasters and accidents.
5. Labor unions need full chemical information for safety training.
6. Companies themselves need complete information to insure that efficient processes are being used and that quality control is operating correctly.
7. Scientists and researchers need accurate and comparable national information in order to adequately access comparative economic and environmental risks and benefits associated with specific industries. This is essential for studies of such things as property values, unemployment, rates of specific illnesses, and effects on minority or poor populations.
As an example of how even a little bit of toxic information can be valuable, consider the nation’s best known right-to-know law, the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). TRI covers only extensive releases of a small number of toxic chemicals. Despite its limited scope, this public reporting program is credited with reducing toxic releases to the environment by some 50 percent.
The city of Eugene, Oregon is the only city to host a toxics right-to-know website and database. Eugene’s Toxics Database is unique in that it provides information about local use and emissions of pollutants. The Eugene Toxics Right-to-Know program was adopted by local voters in November 1996 as an amendment to the city’s charter. It was included on the ballot via the citizen initiative process. The initiative was a response to the perception that information concerning the use of hazardous substances in the community, and in particular the releases of those substances into the local environment, was not readily accessible to citizens under existing reporting regulations. Information can be searched by chemical, industry, or facility.
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