Each year, industrial plants in the U.S. release about one and a half billion pounds of toxic chemicals directly into the air. Most of these releases are legal. The use of our air as a dumping ground, or sink, for the toxic byproducts of industrial production is, for the most part, not prohibited—but it is measured.

Instead of directly regulating companies, the U.S. depends heavily on the “right-to-know” to protect citizens against industrial toxic pollution. It's a right that came about because of the terrible Bhopal disaster in India. In 1984, the American pesticide company Union Carbide spewed 40 tons of a deadly gas into the air. The release killed some 4,000 people immediately and injured tens of thousands more. Many of those died later or have been permanently disabled. After an investigation turned up a similar plant in West Virginia, Congress enacted important Right-to-Know legislation.

“Right-to-know” means that corporations have to publicly report their pollution. But after the reports are filed and published, it's up to the stakeholders—citizens, employees, shareholders and managers—to respond as they see fit. For this approach to work, stakeholders need access to the information. They also have to be able to know what the information means. And last but not least, they need to be able to respond to the information. To help stakeholders do all this, the Corporate Toxics Information Project of the Political Economy Research Institute at Umass-Amherst uses two databases from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The first is the Toxics Release Inventory. It reports how much each facility released into air, water, and soil of roughly 600 toxic chemicals. The reports are pretty daunting to look at: some facilities release dozens of obscurely-named chemicals.

The second is the Risk Screening Environmental Indicators project, or RSEI. it shows how dangerous each chemical is on a per-pound basis. This make it possible find out the actual human health risk from different chemicals. RSEI also estimates how each chemical spreads from the releasing facility to the surrounding area. Finally, RSEI shows how many people live in the areas affected by the release.

The Corporate Toxics Information Project adds one final—and crucial—piece of information: ownership of each polluting facility. By tracking subsidiaries, mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and spin-offs, the Corporate Toxics Information Project finds out which companies own and are responsible for each of the polluting facilities. Ownership matters. The owners are liable for damage, including environmental and health damage, from their facilities. One key way to call polluters to account is to let managers and shareholders know that their companies pollute.

We publish “The Toxic 100,” a list of the top polluters among the largest U.S. and foreign-owned companies with facilities in the U.S. And corporations do take note. The previous publication of the Toxic 100 cited ExxonMobil Corporation among the Top 10, and the ranking appeared in a 2008 ExxonMobil stockholder resolution demanding more corporate environmental accountability. In 2005, the most recent year for which the data are available, Du Pont topped the list, largely due to the 400,000 pounds of chloroprene the company released at a rubber plant in Louisville, Kentucky, a plant that closed in February 2008, in part due to environmental concerns.

You can see this list and supporting information at our website, toxic100.org where we report the toxic score which summarizes the quantity, toxicity, spread, and affected population for each polluting company in the United States. We hope that you will use the right-to-know to realize your right to clean air.

About Michael Ash

Michael Ash is an assistant professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he also works on the Corporate Toxics Information Project of the Political Economy Research Institute.

This commentary is part of a parternship between CSRwire and Corporate Watchdog Radio. To hear the audio, please click here.