Combined Toxic 100/Greenhouse 100 Polluters Indexes:

2018 Report, Based on 2015 Data

Toxic 100 Air Rank, Greenhouse 100 Rank: the company’s rank for air toxics and for greenhouse gases in 2015 — CTIP’s two most important indexes. Both are for emissions from large facilities only. Links lead to detailed information.

EJ Poor and Minority Shares: Shares of potential exposure to air toxics (for Toxic 100 Air) or to co-pollutants of combustion (for Greenhouse 100) borne by people living below the poverty line or by people in minority racial/ethnic groups.

Toxic 100 Water Rank: the company’s rank for water toxics from large facilities in 2015. Links lead to more detailed information.

Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index Technical Notes (2018/2015)

Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

GHGRP Data

The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program database (GHGRP), compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to the FY2008 Consolidated Appropriations Act (H.R. 2764; Public Law 110–161), annually reports the weight (in metric tons) of greenhouse gasses from both large direct emission sources and suppliers of fossil fuels. From an EPA About the Program page: “In general, facilities that directly emit 25,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent or more per year are required to submit annual reports to EPA. In addition, suppliers of certain products that would result in GHG emissions if released, combusted or oxidized are required to report.” Data has been reported so far (as of December 2017) for 2010 through 2015.

Our analysis uses 2015 reports from large direct emission sources (i.e. facilities) from this database. Suppliers were not included since some suppliers provide fuel to direct emission sources, and this would result in the fuel being counted twice. The GHGRP database provides data on more industrial sectors than previous U.S. facility-specific databases since it covers more than the electricity generation sector — it also covers petroleum and natural gas systems, refineries (we used data from them as direct sources of emissions, not as suppliers), chemicals, waste, metals, minerals, and pulp and paper.

We added up direct carbon dioxide emissions plus emissions of methane, nitrous oxide, and fluorinated gases as carbon dioxide equivalents as reported within the GHGRP database. Biogenic carbon dioxide was not included within these totals.

We obtained the GHGRP data from the Envirofacts Customized Search Summary Subjects on September 8, 2017. These data were last updated by EPA on August 13, 2016.

Parent Company Matching

Using information on company ownership of facilities from the GHGRP reports, company websites, the CrocTail database of SEC filings, and news reports, we matched each facility to its parent company. Each facility was assigned either one or two parents as follows:

If more than 50% of a facility was controlled by a single parent, that parent was assumed to have final control over the facility’s operations, and was assigned full responsibility for the facility’s pollution.
If two companies each controlled 50% of a facility (i.e. it was a 50/50 joint venture), then its pollution was divided between the two companies.
If a single company controlled 50% of a facility and no other single entity controlled the other 50%, that company was considered to be the parent of the facility.
If no parent controlled 50% of a facility, the facility was considered to be its own parent.

The GHGRP database includes detailed ownership percentages of facilities by multiple parents, and we could have used these to assign each facility’s pollution to many parents instead of one or two. However, these percentages reported within the GHGRP are percentages of ownership, not percentages of emissions. It is possible for power plants to have multiple generating units owned by different companies in which the percentage of ownership of the facility as a whole does not match the percentage of the facility’s emissions from each set of generating units. Therefore, we consider that assigning pollution by corporate majority ownership better reflects the data.

Corporate ownership of facilities was reported to the GHGRP as it was on December 31, 2015. In some cases we updated parent companies according to mergers, acquisitions, and corporate name changes that took place through late 2017, under the principle that when one company acquires another, it takes responsibility for that company’s past pollution. We also combined some U.S. subsidiaries of common foreign companies together.

The Greenhouse 100 list was created by ranking the 100 largest parent companies for carbon dioxide equivalent emissions (excluding biogenic carbon dioxide) from the 2015 GHGRP database of large fixed facilities, after parent companies were assigned as above. Facilities that were owned 50%/50% by two companies had half of their emissions assigned to each parent.

The Greenhouse 100 list and application lists both parent company carbon dioxide equivalent totals and percentages of the database. The application also shows data from individual facilities owned by each parent company and from industrial sectors at each. For each parent company, the percentage of the company’s total emissions that are from a single facility is displayed in the Greenhouse 100 list if that percentage is over 70%. This helps to identify companies whose overall emissions are dominated by a single source.

Matches to Other Data

For comparison, the application also shows each parent company’s percentage contribution to total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions including all sources, such as transportation, commercial, agricultural and residential emissions, as taken from the 2015 U.S. Inventory. This percentage (of the parent company’s emissions compared to all emissions within the U.S.) is listed in the Greenhouse 100 table.

The detailed Greenhouse 100 application shows links to a company’s Toxic 100 Air and Toxic 100 Water pages if the company also has data in those databases. Individual facilities displayed in the detailed application have been linked to their Toxic 100 Air data if the same facility is in both datasets. Finally, Greenhouse 100 companies have been linked to data on dollar penalties for each company from Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker and local, state, and Federal subsidies for each company from Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker.

EJ Data

For anthropogenic global climate change, the locations of the facilities emitting greenhouse gases do not matter. But these facilities also commonly emit co-pollutants, such as particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and sulfur oxides, as well as other criteria and toxic air pollutants, that have harmful effects on people living nearby. For this reason we calculated facility locational environmental justice (EJ) ratios by using American Community Survey 2015 5-year average block group data on people living within 10 miles of each facility. The minority EJ ratio is the percentage share of racial and ethnic minorities in the total population living within the 10-mile radius around each facility; in the advanced data display, this is disaggregated into specific minority groups. Similarly, the poverty EJ ratio is the percentage of people living below the poverty line within this radius, and the “near poor” percentage is the percentage of people living up to twice the poverty level.

For EJ ratios for parent companies, we weighted population numbers within a ten mile radius of each facility by multiplying them by the CO2 emissions from that facility, then summed up the weighted numbers for all facilities in the company and divided the poor or minority weighted population sum by the total weighted population sum. This implicitly assumes that the amount of co-pollutants produced by each facility is on average proportional to the amount of CO2 it releases.

Toxic 100 Air Polluters Technical Notes (2018/2015)

Toxic 100 Air Polluters Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

TRI and RSEI Data

Our analysis uses 2015 releases of toxic chemicals into air nationwide. We combine fugitive and stack releases. We also include post-incineration releases.

The EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics processes the raw TRI reports to create the Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (U.S. EPA RSEI version 2.3.5). The EPA combines three variables to assess the human health risks posed by toxic releases:

fate and transport, or how the chemical spreads from the point of release to the surrounding area;
toxicity, or how dangerous the chemical is on a per-pound basis; and
population, or how many people live in the affected areas.

Each release begins at a smokestack, leaking valve, open canister, or other source within the facility or at the stack of an off-site incineration facility. Using the AERMOD fate-and-transport model, EPA combines data on local wind patterns, temperature, and topography with information on the smokestack height and the exit velocity of released gases and information about each chemical (molecular weight and rate of decay in sunlight and air) to determine the concentrations of releases in each 810 m by 810 m grid cell within 50 km around the release point. For incinerator releases, the model computes the fraction of the chemical that escapes incineration.

EPA matches each chemical to a toxicity weight that expresses the relative toxicity of the chemical per pound or per unit of concentration. Although all TRI chemicals are hazardous, their toxicities vary greatly. At the extremes, just one pound of dioxin is equivalent, in terms of inhalation toxicity, to 20 billion pounds of the chemical chlorodifluoromethane (HCFC-22). The enormous variation in toxicity limits the usefulness of comparisons on the basis of the simple mass (pounds) of chemicals released. By multiplying the mass of each toxic release by its toxicity weight, EPA can compare the toxic significance of releases of different chemicals.

The EPA’s toxicity-weighting system is based on peer-reviewed toxicity databases including those of the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) Reference Dose Tracking Reports, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Office of Environmental Health Hazard and Assessment (OEHHA), and the EPA’s Health Effects Assessment Tables (HEAST). For some of the chemicals listed in the TRI, no consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate toxicity weight, and these chemicals are excluded from the analysis. In the TRI data for the year 2015, chemicals with toxicity weights account for 99 percent of the reported pounds for all on-site air releases. Further details on the toxicity weights are available from the EPA.

After accounting for the quantity, dispersion, and toxicity of the release, EPA multiplies toxicity-weighted concentrations by the number of people living in each of the grid cell to measure the population health risk. (EPA slightly modifies the simple head count to account for differential uptake of chemicals depending on the age and sex composition of the exposed population.) A facility located in an urban area with high population density thus generates more risk than a facility with identical releases in a less populous rural area. To obtain the RSEI score for the facility, EPA aggregates the population-weighted, toxicity-weighted impacts for the entire area around the facility.

The Corporate Toxics Information Project of the Political Economy Research Institute at UMass Amherst updates the TRI data so that they represent the most current available about the reporting year, in case companies revise earlier TRI reporting. In the case of downward revisions of the mass released, RSEI scores are adjusted on the assumption of a linear relation between pounds released and that release’s RSEI score. Upward revisions or new reports are noted but do not engender adjustments of the RSEI score.

Parent Company Matching

Using information on company ownership of facilities from the TRI reports, company websites, the CrocTail database of SEC filings, and news reports, we matched each facility to its parent company. Each facility was assigned either one or two parents as follows:

If more than 50% of a facility was controlled by a single parent, that parent was assumed to have final control over the facility’s operations, and was assigned full responsibility for the facility’s pollution.
If two companies each controlled 50% of a facility (i.e. it was a 50/50 joint venture), then its pollution was divided between the two companies.
If a single company controlled 50% of a facility and no other single entity controlled the other 50%, that company was considered to be the parent of the facility.
If no parent controlled 50% of a facility, the facility was considered to be its own parent.

In some cases we updated parent companies according to mergers, acquisitions, and corporate name changes that took place through late 2017, under the principle that when one company acquires another, it takes responsibility for that company’s past pollution. We also combined some U.S. subsidiaries of common foreign companies together.

We then aggregated the RSEI scores for air releases of toxics by the facilities owned by each parent company, and ranked companies on this basis. Facilities that were owned 50%/50% by two companies had half of their emissions assigned to each parent.

The Toxic 100 Air application also shows data from individual facilities owned by each parent company and from chemicals at each. For each parent company, the percentage of the company’s total score that is from a single facility is displayed in the Toxic 100 Air list if that percentage is over 70%. This helps to identify companies whose overall chronic human health air risk is dominated by a single source.

Large Company lists

The Toxic 100 Air Polluters list reports the top polluters among the companies that appeared on any of the following lists of large US and foreign-owned corporations:

Forbes Global 2000, 2017 ranking (only first 500 companies)
Forbes America’s Largest Private Companies, 2017 version
Fortune 500, version as of end of fiscal year 2017
Fortune Global 500, 2017 version
S&P 500 as of July 26, 2017

Pollution data for the entire universe of companies that report toxic air emissions to EPA can be accessed via the searchable database that accompanies the Toxic 100 list.

Matches to other data

The detailed Toxic 100 Air application shows links to a company’s Toxic 100 Water and Greenhouse 100 pages if the company also has data in those databases. Individual facilities displayed in the detailed application have been linked to their Greenhouse 100 data if the same facility is in both datasets. Finally, Toxic 100 Air companies have been linked to data on dollar penalties for each company from Good Jobs First’s Violation Tracker and local, state, and Federal subsidies for each company from Good Jobs First’s Subsidy Tracker.

EJ Data

We calculate environmental justice (EJ) ratios using geographical microdata generated by the RSEI model, which report impacts in individual grid cells. We match the RSEI grid cells to U.S. Bureau of the Census geography (as is done in the RSEI model to obtain population density), and link data on race, ethnicity, and poverty from the 2011-2015 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates (U.S. Bureau of the Census).

The minority EJ ratio is the percentage share of racial and ethnic minorities in the total RSEI score of the facility or firm; in the advanced data display, this is disaggregated into specific minority groups. Similarly, the poverty EJ ratio is the percentage people living below the Federal poverty line in the total RSEI score of the facility or firm, and near-poor refers to people living below 150 percent of the Federal poverty line.

For comparison, in 2015 in the U.S., the share of people living in poverty was 13% and the share of the population that identified as Hispanic or nonwhite was 39%. Further details on our peer-reviewed method for calculating EJ ratios can be found in our report Justice in the Air, and in Michael Ash and James K. Boyce, “Measuring Corporate Environmental Justice Performance,” Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, Vol. 18, No. 2, 2011.

Toxic 100 Water Polluters Technical Notes (2018/2015)

Toxic 100 Water Polluters Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

TRI and RSEI Data

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI), compiled by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in accordance with the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986, annually reports the weight (in pounds) of each of approximately 600 toxic chemicals released into the environment by major industrial facilities in the United States. Our analysis uses year 2015 releases of toxic chemicals into surface water nationwide. We combine direct surface-water and post-sewage-treatment releases.

The EPA has developed a method called Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) to make the TRI reports more useful to the public. The EPA provides additional information to assess the potential chronic human health hazard posed by toxic releases:

toxicity, or how dangerous the chemical is on a per-pound basis; and
removal efficiency, or how much of the chemical is prevented from entering surface water following transfers for sewage treatment at Publicly Owned Treatment Works (POTWs).

EPA matches each chemical to a toxicity weight that expresses the relative toxicity of the chemical per pound or per unit of concentration. Although all TRI chemicals are hazardous, their toxicities vary greatly. For example, the toxicity weight for ingesting the chemical zinc is about 3 while the toxicity weight for ingesting mercury is 10,000. It is roughly than 3,000 times more potentially harmful to ingest mercury as it is to ingest an equal quantity of zinc. The chemicals reported in the Toxics Release Inventory vary by ten orders of magnitude in their oral toxicity weights (from 0.02 for sulfuric acid to 1,400,000,000 for dioxin). The enormous variation in toxicity limits the usefulness of comparisons on the basis of the simple mass (pounds) of chemicals released. By multiplying the mass of each toxic release by its toxicity weight, EPA can compare the toxic significance of releases of different chemicals.

The EPA’s toxicity-weighting system is based on peer-reviewed toxicity databases including those of the EPA’s Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS), the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs (OPP) Reference Dose Tracking Reports, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), the California Environmental Protection Agency (CalEPA) Office of Environmental Health Hazard and Assessment (OEHHA), and the EPA’s Health Effects Assessment Tables (HEAST). For some of the chemicals listed in the TRI, no consensus has been reached regarding the appropriate toxicity weight, and these chemicals are excluded from the analysis. In the TRI data for the year 2015, chemicals with toxicity weights account for more than 97% of the reported pounds for all water releases. Further details on the toxicity weights are available from the EPA at https://www.epa.gov/rsei/rsei-toxicity-data-and-calculations.

For many chemicals in the TRI, the US EPA Risk Reduction Engineering Laboratory estimates the removal efficiency, or how successfully sewage treatment removes toxic chemicals from wastes that are transferred for treatment based on the technology used and the type of influent. Toxic chemicals that are not removed are released into surface water with other effluents post-treatment: details are at https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2015-12/documents/technical_appendix_b-pchem_v2.3.4.pdf

The product of the toxicity weight and the quantity released, including both direct and estimated post-treatment releases, is called the RSEI Hazard and represents potential human chronic-health hazard from water releases of the toxic chemicals. The extent of population risk also depends on other determinants of exposure, including dilution and sedimentation in waterways, fish consumption from and recreation in contaminated waters, the location of drinking-water intakes, and the effectiveness of drinking-water treatment in achieving safe levels for regulated contaminants, and the number of persons affected.

The data cover toxic releases from point-source industrial facilities reporting to TRI. Agricultural pollution, boating and shipping, runoff from streets and roads, and other important sources of water pollution are not included in the analysis. The data are additionally limited to TRI listed toxic chemicals.

The Corporate Toxics Information Project (CTIP) of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at UMass Amherst adjusts the TRI data so that they represent the most current available about the reporting year, in case companies revise earlier TRI reporting. In the case of downward revisions of pounds released, RSEI Hazards are adjusted based on the linear relation between pounds released and that release’s RSEI Hazard. Upward revisions or new reports are noted but do not engender adjustments of the RSEI Hazard.

Parent Company Matching

If more than 50% of a facility was controlled by a single parent, that parent was assumed to have final control over the facility’s operations, and was assigned full responsibility for the facility’s pollution.
If two companies each controlled 50% of a facility (i.e. it was a 50/50 joint venture), then its pollution was divided between the two companies.
If a single company controlled 50% of a facility and no other single entity controlled the other 50%, that company was considered to be the parent of the facility.
If no parent controlled 50% of a facility, the facility was considered to be its own parent.

We then aggregated the RSEI hazard for water releases of toxics by the facilities owned by each parent company, and ranked companies on this basis. Facilities that were owned 50%/50% by two companies had half of their hazard assigned to each parent.

The Toxic 100 Water application also shows data from individual facilities owned by each parent company and from chemicals at each. For each parent company, the percentage of the company’s total score that is from a single facility is displayed in the Toxic 100 Water list if that percentage is over 70%. This helps to identify companies whose overall chronic human health air risk is dominated by a single source.

Large Company lists

The Toxic 100 Water Polluters list reports the top polluters among the companies that appeared on any of the following lists of large US and foreign-owned corporations:

Forbes Global 2000, 2017 ranking (only first 500 companies)
Forbes America’s Largest Private Companies, 2017 version
Fortune 500, version as of end of fiscal year 2017
Fortune Global 500, 2017 version
S&P 500 as of July 26, 2017

Pollution data for the entire universe of companies that report toxic water emissions to EPA can be accessed via the searchable database that accompanies the Toxic 100 list.

See previous editions

Greenhouse 100 Polluters Index Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

Toxic 100 Air Polluters Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

Toxic 100 Water Polluters Technical Notes (2018 Report based on 2015 data)

Stay connected and sign up for PERI updates