Databases Available Free from the EPA, DOT and OSHA

Miscellaneous Databases

The easiest way, by far to locate a link or download on this web site is to click on search and enter the keywords of the item you are seeking, then go to the referenced page(s). For your convenience, this page is a consolidation of some of the miscellaneous databases offered by EHSO.

If you want to search EPA databases and other publicly available environmental databases, scroll down this page to find the area of your interest!

What is TRI?
The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a publicly available EPA database that contains information on toxic chemical releases and other waste management activities reported annually by certain covered industry groups as well as federal facilities. This inventory was established under the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 (EPCRA) and expanded by the Pollution Prevention Act of 1990. ( more on "What Is TRI " and TRI Program Fact Sheet )

If you want information about toxic chemical releases in your neighborhood - click here! nter your zip code here: and click

Materials from or related to State governments , the US EPA , DOT , OSHA and local agencies are on their own pages - click on the corresponding name .

Downloads take the form of ASCII text files (.txt), image files (.GIF or .JPG) and PDF. PDF (Portable Document Format) files must be viewed and printed with the use of an Adobe Acrobat Reader.
The Adobe Acrobat's Reader is available, free, for Unix, Macintosh, IBM DOS and IBM Windows operating systems. Click this button to download the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. You need only download it once, so if you have already downloaded it previously, don't bother again.

Quick Links to Generate Reports from Data

Query the Envirofacts database and generate reports using online Query Forms. You may generate an integrated report by searching several EPA environmental databases using the Envirofacts (multisystem) Query form.

The Envirofacts Warehouse also allows you to search for more detailed information by querying the databases individually: If you want to read a description of each of these databases first , just scroll down this page!

Click on these links to go directly to the related query page:

• To use the multi-system search tool to search across the EPA's databases, click here!
• Envirofacts Multisystem Query
• Superfund Data
• Water:
  • Safe Drinking Water Information
  • Water Discharge Permits
• Hazardous Waste Data
• Grants Information
• EZ Locational query
• Facility Information
• Environmental Radiation Ambient Monitoring System
• Air Releases
• Master Chemical Integrator
• Toxics Release Inventory
  • TRI Customized Query
  • PCS Customized Query
  • Mapping - EnviroMapper
  • Brownfields Pilot projects
  • Enforcement and compliance: ECHO query
  • ATDSR's Hazardous Substance Release/Health Effects Database

The Envirofacts Multisystem Query integrates information from a variety of databases and includes latitude and longitude information. Each of these databases contains information about facilities that are required to report activity to a state or federal system. Using this form, you can retrieve information about hazardous waste (including the Biennial Report), toxic and air releases, Superfund sites, and water discharge permits. This query is fully integrated with EnviroMapper.

The federal government locates, investigates, and cleans up the worst hazardous waste sites throughout the United States. These sites are designated "Superfund sites." Common Superfund sites include abandoned warehouses, landfills, and industrial facilities that dumped hazardous waste into the environment before it was regulated. Use the Superfund Query form to retrieve information about designated Superfund sites.

Permit Compliance System (PCS)
The Clean Water Act requires wastewater dischargers to have a permit that establishes pollution limits and specifies monitoring and reporting requirements. The National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits regulate household and industrial wastes that are collected in sewers and treated at municipal wastewater treatment plants. Permits also regulate industrial point sources and concentrated animal feeding operations that discharge into other wastewater collection systems or that discharge directly into receiving waters. The Water Discharge Permits query form allows you to retrieve permit information. The customized query engine allows you select any data element in PCS to build a tabular report or a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file for downloading.

Safe Drinking Water Information
EPA collects data about how well water utilities comply with drinking water regulations and whether any enforcement actions were taken against utilities. This information is stored in the Safe Drinking and Water Information System database (SDWIS). Use the Safe Drinking Water Query form to view a utility's violations and enforcement history for the last ten years.

National Drinking Water Contaminant Occurrence Information
In 1996, Congress mandated that a repository of drinking water occurrence information be created; this repository is the National Drinking Water Contaminant Occurrence Database (NCOD). The database holds information from a number of sources, including public water systems and source (ambient) water. NCOD contains regulated and unregulated contaminant data for public water systems. The NCOD Query Form allows you to access information on contaminant occurrence in an individual system or by geographical area.

Drinking Water Microbial and Disinfection Byproduct Information
The Information Collection Rule (ICR) required water systems serving 100,000 people or more to collect samples and report on microbial (source water) and disinfection byproduct (treated water) levels for 18 months (July 1997-December 1998). Twelve months worth of these data is now stored in Envirofacts. Use the ICR Query Form to view reports at the water system, state, and national levels. Be sure to review the cautions on data use before interpreting the data.

Resource Conservation and Recovery Information System
The Resource, Conservation, and Recovery Act requires that generators, transporters, treaters, storers, and disposers of hazardous waste provide information concerning their activities to state environmental agencies. These agencies then provide the information to regional and national U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) offices. This information is available to you using the Hazardous Waste Data query form.

Biennial Reporting System
Detailed hazardous waste information is collected on the generation of hazardous waste from large quantity generators and data on waste management practices from treatment, storage, and disposal facilities. This information is compiled into a Biennial Report and is useful for trend analysis.

The Grants Information and Control System is used by Headquarters, regions, and states to track, award, administer, and monitor grants. Envirofacts provides the public with timely award information for most of EPA's Federal Grant Programs, specifically Construction, Non-Construction, and State Revolving Funds grant programs. The Grants Information query form allows you to read about projects that have received grants.

Locational information for EPA-regulated facilities in Envirofacts is cultivated from many sources, including EPA federal program systems (through monthly snapshots), and EPA regional offices and the states (through Supplementary Return Files). This information is collected and refined under the auspices of the Locational Data Improvement Project (LDIP), which was enacted by the Agency to comply with the federal Locational Data Policies (LDP).

The locational information in Envirofacts is stored in the Locational Reference Tables (LRT). The LRT act as a storehouse for the actual locational data, as well as the business rules that are applied to them in order to provide the most accurate information available for depicting the locations of federally regulated entities. The EZ query allows you to select key data elements from EPA's Facility Information database and Locational Reference database to build a tabular report or a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file for downloading.

The Facility Registry System in Envirofacts was derived from several sources, including all of the program systems in Envirofacts. Use the Facility Registry System query form or the Facility Registry System EZ Query to view facility data.

The Environmental Radiation Ambient Monitoring System (ERAMS) is a national network of more than 200 monitoring stations distributed across all 50 states and the American Territories. Each station regularly samples the nation's air, precipitation, drinking water, or pasteurized milk for a variety of radionuclides (e.g., iodine-131) and radiation types (e.g., gross beta (b)). Use the Environmental Radiation Ambient Monitoring System query form or the Environmental Radiation Ambient Monitoring System Customized Query to view radiation data. The Radiation Information Database (RADINFO) Query allows you to retrieve selected data from RADINFO database in Envirofacts regarding facilities or sites that EPA regulates for radiation and radioactivity.

Envirofacts contains information about stationary sources of air pollution (facilities) in the Aerometric Information Retrieval System (AIRS)/AIRS Facility Subsystem (AFS). Examples of facilities (sources) include electric power plants, steel mills, factories, and universities. Use the Air Releases query form to retrieve both emissions and compliance information for these facilities.

The UV Index query form predicts the next day's ultraviolet radiation levels for a particular city or ZIP code based on a 0-10+ scale.

The Envirofacts Master Chemical Integrator query form allows you to obtain the acronyms, chemical identification numbers, and chemical names reported in Envirofacts. Chemical information is also available using the Air Release, Toxic Release, and Water Discharge Permits query forms.

Envirofacts provides users with the ability to generate a variety of maps using data from the Envirofacts Data Warehouse, as well as other data sources. Using these applications, you can map a specific geographic area and determine the environmental conditions and features of that area, use GIS functionality to examine spatial data at the county, state, and national level, display multiple spatial layers, and query single Envirofacts points. Mapping applications available from Envirofacts include:

• EnviroMapper,
• EnviroMapper for New York City Response,
• Window to My Environment, and
• OpenLink.

The Brownfields Initiative, which began in 1995, provides up to $200,000 for two years to qualified states, cities, towns, counties, and tribes with the goals of identifying brownfields sites and facilitating their cleanup. The Brownfields Initiatives program attempts to revitalize these areas economically and environmentally. Read about Brownfields Pilot projects.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and other federal, state and local agencies have collected extensive environmental monitoring data from the World Trade Center site and nearby areas in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey. Since September 11, EPA has taken samples of the air, dust, water, river sediments and drinking water and analyzed them for the presence of pollutants that might pose a health risk to response workers at the World Trade Center site and the public. Read more about the monitoring data in NYC.

EPA is committed to public access to environmental information and has worked with States to develop a format for providing Internet access to information contained in core EPA data systems. ECHO focuses on facility compliance and EPA/State enforcement of environmental regulations. Though the data included within ECHO have been in the public domain through Freedom of Information Act requests and mainframe computer subscription, the information was not available in a searchable Web format. The ECHO query makes it much easier for the public to obtain these data records on the Internet.

HazDat, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry's Hazardous Substance Release/Health Effects Database, is the scientific and administrative database developed to provide access to information on the release of hazardous substances from Superfund sites or from emergency events and on the effects of hazardous substances on the health of human populations. The following information is included in HazDat: site characteristics, activities and site events, contaminants found, contaminant media and maximum concentration levels, impact on population, community health concerns, ATSDR public health threat categorization, ATSDR recommendations, environmental fate of hazardous substances, exposure routes, and physical hazards at the site/event. In addition, HazDat contains substance-specific information such as the ATSDR Priority List of Hazardous Substances, health effects by route and duration of exposure, metabolites, interactions of substances, susceptible populations, and biomarkers of exposure and effects. HazDat also contains data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Information System (CERCLIS) database, including site CERCLIS number, site description, latitude/longitude, operable units, and additional site information.

(Note: this is a very up-to-date database - It was last updated 6 days ago)

• Site Activity Query
• Site Activity - Sensitive State Map
• Site Contaminant Query
• Toxicological Profile Query
• ToxFAQ Sheets Text Search
• Public Health Assessments Text Search
  

Background and Overview Information About the Databases

Read the Envirofacts Overview for information about the Envirofacts databases. These links pro:

• Superfund Data
• Safe Drinking Water Information
• Hazardous Waste Data
• Toxics Release Inventory
• Water Discharge Permits
• Air Releases
• Grants Information
• Locational Data Improvement Project
• Latitude/Longitude Information
• EPA's Spatial Data Library