Section 1: Chemical Manufacturing

Releases by the Chemical Manufacturing Sector

As shown in this figure, total releases by the chemical manufacturing sector decreased by 9% from 2003 to 2013. This is primarily due to a reduction in air emissions. Water releases have also declined since 2003, while on-site releases to land and off-site disposal have increased slightly. Over the past four years, total releases remained fairly constant with only an increase of 5 million pounds (+1%) from 2012 to 2013. The chemical manufacturing sector had the third-largest quantity of total disposal or other releases in 2013.

For more information on how this sector and others can choose safer chemicals, visit EPA’s Design for the Environment Program pages for Alternatives Assessments and the Safer Chemical Ingredients List.

This page was published in January 2015 and uses the 2013 TRI National Analysis dataset made public in TRI Explorer in October 2014.