USA Today spent eight months examining the impact of industrial pollution on the air outside schools across the nation. A computer simulation predicts the path of toxic chemicals released by thousands of industrial companies located near schools.
Type in the name of your school and its location to find what the model predicts for your school population. Read more at the jump.
Reporters worked with researchers and scientists at the University of
Massachusetts-Amherst,
According to the explanation of methodology, toxicity assessments for each school are based on emissions data collected by the federal Environmental Protection Agency as part of its Toxics Release Inventory program, also known as TRI:
More than 20,000 industrial and government facilities are required to tell the agency about their emissions of hundreds of chemicals that are known to harm humans or the environment. Most facilities do not measure their emissions; rather, their reports to the TRI are estimates. It is difficult to verify the accuracy of those estimates, but some critics have complained that TRI reports generally understate emissions. ...
Because it is based on reports from 2005 and includes only some potential sources of pollution, the model may not fully reflect the current situation at each school. For example, some facilities have closed since 2005, and others have opened. Also, large industrial sites account for only a fraction of the nation's toxic air pollution. The EPA estimates that in 2002, cars, smaller businesses and other sources accounted for 85% of the toxic chemicals in the nation's air.
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