GLRPPR Sector Resource: Toxic Trends Mapper
Toxic Trends Mapper
The concept for this web map application was introduced in 2011 in the book, "Coming Clean", by Michael E. Kraft, Mark Stephan, and Troy D. Abel. That book puts forth the idea that information disclosure can be a policy strategy for environmental protection. This web map is designed to use visual representation of environmental information to provide access to a larger audience of citizens so that they may be able to influence the environmental policy directly affecting their health and the health of their communities.
This web map visually represents industrial air pollution information to citizens across the United States by mapping the relative risk from air pollution that industrial facilities pose to the human health of their communities and how those risks might change over time. Facility pollution information comes from the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI), an inventory by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the States to collect data annually on releases and transfers of certain toxic chemicals from industrial facilities. TRI facilities are depicted as circles with colors that correlate to a risk screening value that is based on modeled output data from the EPA's Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) model for assessing TRI data. RSEI is a screening model, not a risk assessment that allows one to make a direct link a facility's chemical release to harm being caused to a specific population or location.
Environmental Council of States; Western Washington University Huxley Spatial Institute
Date of Publication:
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