ToxicRisk – mapping Toxic Release Inventory data

Mike from MapCruzin sent us this comment based on our December 2007 post on the MapEcos project, in order to let us know about a project he’s working on called ToxicRisk. Our comment system apparently didn’t want to play nice, so I thought I’d post Mike’s comment in full below, so that you can read more about the ToxicRisk mapping project and the US Toxic Release Inventory:

“Two weeks ago we launched ToxicRisk. It is based on Google Maps, as is
MapEcos, but uses the most recent Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) 2007 data
released March 19, 2009 by EPA rather than older 2005 data. We wanted to
make the maps as easy to use and fast as possible so my son Aran did all of
the program in house. He has released some of this programming to the
public domain and you can access it at CPAN.

A little background: I began working with Toxic Release Inventory
data and GIS mapping
doing environmental justice research as an
undergrad and then graduate student at the University of California. Over
those years my son, Aran Deltac who has extensive programming experience,
and I developed the first U.S. based interactive pollution maps on the
internet. It was small and simple and only covered my home county, Santa
Cruz, CA, but it caught the attention of the Environmental Defense Fund. We
were hired by EDF to do the maps for their very popular Scorecard Project.

Given EPA’s current emphasis on toxics and schools, we added schools
to the maps and calculated how many schools are within 1 mile and 5 miles
of each school. As you zoom into an area the facilities are hittable
showing the school data and a link to RTK Net for facility
report.

We are working now to do the reporting similar to what we have done for
the EPA Risk Management Plans
(RMP) and link the chemicals in our reports to Scorecard.org for
comprehensive information about the toxic a facility has released in our
neighborhoods and communities.

There are over 80,000 chemicals in use in the U.S. and the TRI data
accounts for less than 1% of these. There is little data available for most
of these, but we will add as much as we can. Over the next weeks we are
adding demographics, hazardous waste, water pollution and superfund data to
the maps. We are dedicated to bringing available toxic, environmental, and
demographic data to citizens in easily digestible formats so that they can
use this information to improve conditions where they live, work and play.
ToxicRisk is a work-in-progress and we look
forward to your comments, suggestions and critque.”


Mike Meuser
Right-To-Know More
About Environmental Injustice
http://www.toxicrisk.com
http://www.mapcruzin.com

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