Last week the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) publicly released 2004 data on releases and disposals of toxic pollution throughout the country. EPA stressed that overall the data shows a 4 percent reduction in total release and disposal of toxic chemicals. When examined more closely, however, the data reveals a number of troubling trends in the 2004 data. The data is available for searching on OMB Watch's Right to Know Network (RTK NET) as well as EPA's TRI Explorer. While EPA touted the minor reduction in toxic pollution, the agency's own analysis noted that the reduction was primarily the result of changing reporting standards for the mining industry, resulting in a 14 percent drop in mining pollution reported. Without this reporting adjustment, the 2004 Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) actually shows a slight increase from 2003. EPA also noted an alarming 10 percent increase over the previous year of toxic chemical releases into water. The agency has also heralded significant reductions in key chemicals such as dioxin and mercury, which are among a category of chemicals persistent bio-accumulative toxins (PBTs) that EPA tracks more closely due to the significant health risks associated with them. EPA noted that dioxin and mercury have dropped 58 percent and 16 percent respectively from their 2003 levels. However, these "reductions" are an illusion caused by a spike of releases and disposals that occurred for these chemicals in 2003. Overall, releases and disposals for both chemicals are up--dioxin has increased 13 percent since 2000 and mercury is up 29 percent since 2000. Initial state-level analysis offers a glimpse into the enormous fluctuations and disparities that still occur in toxic pollution. Some states, such as Washington, Montana, Missouri and Arkansas showed increases in releases and disposals of toxic chemicals ranging between 45 percent and 22 percent. Other states showed equally large reductions. U.S. PIRG has detailed the varied performance that occurred in the states. This wide range of results across regions demonstrates the need for detailed and consistent reporting. Without such reporting, communities might not know whether their area is getting cleaner or dirtier when it comes to toxic pollution. Unfortunately, EPA's 2004 TRI data may be one of the last complete reviews the public gets of toxic pollution. The agency is currently pursuing plans to significantly reduce the amount of information collected under the TRI program. The agency has proposed significantly raising the threshold for detailed reporting of releases, which could mean that thousands of communities around the country would no longer know exactly what nearby facilities were releasing into the air and water. The agency also wants to cut the program back from annual to every other year, giving polluters a free ride every other year. As noted above, there are still significant fluctuations occurring in the TRI data, especially when individual chemicals, communities, facilities or even states are examined. EPA's threshold changes and alternate year reporting would eliminate our ability to track many of these important trends. This is only the second time in 10 years that the agency has gotten the data out within 16 months of the close of the data's calendar year. Companies have six months after the close of each calendar year to report their TRI data to EPA. The agency has typically taken almost an entire additional year before releasing the data to the public. This year EPA had a number of false starts for releasing the data. The expected date for release was pushed back repeatedly, and, when the information was finally made public on April 13, EPA failed to fully notify public interest and environmental groups about the release. According to EPA, which hastily held a briefing the following day, the omission was accidental. EPA also releases an annual online analysis called the Public Data Release (PDR), which includes a review of overall TRI results. EPA's 2004 PDR contained significantly more tables and charts detailing the biggest polluters in different industries, an improvement over previous years.