142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

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Evaluation of the success of information disclosure on reducing environmental releases in Louisiana

142nd APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition (November 15 - November 19, 2014): http://www.apha.org/events-and-meetings/annual
Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Adrienne Katner, M.S., D. Env. , Dept. of Environmental and Occupational Health, LSU School of Public Health, New Orleans, LA
Background: The aim of this study was to investigate the process of information disclosure as a policy strategy for environmental protection in Louisiana. This is the first known study to investigate the process of information disclosure, as it relates to reducing releases of carcinogens into the environment. The policy of information disclosure, which requires that industries disclose information about their environmental performance, is part of an approach to environmental protection that eschews the conventional command-and-control regulatory apparatus, which sometimes leads government and industry to focus on meeting only minimal standards. The process evaluated here is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) Program which is  probably the best known example of information disclosure.

Methods: Data on the release of known or suspected carcinogens were obtained from the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxics Release Inventory (TRI). Relative risk scores were calculated using the EPA’s Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model, based the amount of chemical released, chemical toxicity values, and the size of the exposed population. Trends in both the releases and relative risk scores for OSHA carcinogens and cancer-specific carcinogens were evaluated and are presented here.  

Results: The RSEI-estimated relative risk scores associated with OSHA carcinogen releases decreased substantially between 1996 and 2011, suggesting that the TRI may have had a positive effect over time on the environmental performance of industry. However, almost half of all facilities reporting between 1996 and 2011 demonstrated an increase in releases and the associated relative risks.

Conclusion: Improvement is not uniform: some facilities have been leaders while others have been laggards. Information disclosure has an important role to play in environmental policy, but only as part of an integrated set of policy tools that includes conventional command and control regulation.

Learning Areas:

Environmental health sciences
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related public policy

Learning Objectives:
Evaluate TRI reported environmental releases using risk-based methods Evaluate the success of information disclosure as a policy for increasing industrial environmental performance

Keyword(s): Environmental Health, Policy/Policy Development

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been the program manager of several state environmental public health programs, and was the principal investigator of a federally funded grant focusing on environmental public health tracking. Among my scientific interests is the association between industrial releases and adverse public health outcomes.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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