Toxic Footprints USA Dashboards FAQ

GENERAL

To show the investors the toxic releases they are exposed to from petrochemical facilities in the Gulf of Mexico. We expect that many investors will not know the specific facilities that they are financing, so by making this more transparent we are hoping that investors will use this information to engage with companies to reduce their toxic footprint. We hope that civil society organisations will also use this information to pressure companies and investors for the same reason.

Investors and civil society organisations are the main target audiences for this work. Anyone with an interest in an investor’s or a corporate’s toxic footprint can view, download and share a PDF of the dashboard.

To simplify the messaging and use of each dashboard. Dashboard 1 should be used to identify the top polluting investors, corporates and facilities, and dashboard 2 should be used to get a more detailed view of the toxic footprint of each entity. This will show the chemicals and locations of toxic releases in more detail than dashboard 1.

Planet Tracker used self-reported activity data from the facilities to identify petrochemical activities. Facilities disclose up to six NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) annually and Planet Tracker assigned the following six codes to identify petrochemical facilities in accordance with other work conducted by Bloomberg Philanthropies:

  • Petroleum Refineries (324110)
  • Petrochemical Manufacturing (325110)
  • All Other Basic Organic Chemical Manufacturing (325199)
  • Plastics Material and Resin Manufacturing (325211)
  • Synthetic Rubber Manufacturing (325212)
  • Nitrogenous Fertiliser Manufacturing (325311)

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) dataset used for this work does not distinguish between permitted and unpermitted releases, therefore it is not possible to say if the releases you see in the dashboard are above or below permitted levels

The EPA updates the TRI and Risk Screening Environmental Indicators (RSEI) datasets annually. TRI data for the previous calendar year tends to be released in October, and updated RSEI datasets sometime afterwards

INTERPRETING CHARTS

Chemical releases are colour coded so that they can easily be distinguished from one another. The colours of chemicals in chart 1 match those being used to display chemicals in chart 4.

Each circle on the map shows the total chemical releases coming from a facility. The larger the circle, the larger the releases. These will change depending on the metric selected.

The chart is a box plot which shows facilities that can be considered outliers due to their toxic chemical releases being significantly different from the rest of the sample. When many facilities are being displayed and/or there are significant outliers, the box plot may be compressed down to appear as a line. For more detailed information on the box plot, hover over the lightbulb next to the chart’s title.

This ranks the investor’s chemical releases for the selected metric out of all the investors in the study. An investor’s rank may change depending on the metric selected.

This chart shows the ultimate corporate entities that own the petrochemical facilities. The corporate entity that is directly responsible for the running of the facility, called the facility parent, is also shown in this chart. There may be many corporate entities between the facility parent and the ultimate corporate entity. We have termed this link between ultimate corporates and the petrochemical facilities the corporate ownership chain.

This ranks the total chemical releases of a facility out of all the facilities for the selected investor. If ‘All’ investors are selected, then the rank shows the top toxic facilities in the whole dataset.

METRICS

There is no specific filter for toxic chemicals. If a user is interested in a particular toxin, then there are two options. The first is to use the highlighter which will fadeout all the other toxic chemicals so the one the user is interested in is easier to see. The second is to click on a chemical in one of the charts which will update all the other charts in the dashboard.

The health impact metrics are produced by the US EPA. The Raw Estimate metric is called RSEI Hazard by the EPA and is calculated by multiplying the physical quantity of the chemical released by the toxicity value for that chemical. The Modelled Estimate metric is called RSEI Score by the EPA and it takes the RSEI Hazard metric and then estimates how the chemical travels through the environment and is ingested by human populations. Both health impact scores are unitless. The third metric provides the physical quantity of the chemical released in pounds.

Toxic release data and associated health impact metrics are taken from the US EPA. Ownership data of public companies has been taken from Refinitiv. For more information on how to replicate the EPA data seen in the report and dashboards, please see Planet Tracker’s EPA Data Guidebook.

Users can select investors, corporate entities and petrochemical facilities of interest. These can be selected by using the filters or by clicking on an entity in one of the charts.

Investors are those financial institutions that have shareholdings in the corporate entities that ultimately own the petrochemical facilities. Petrochemical facilities are defined by using the NAICS codes that they disclose to the EPA which is outlined in more detail above.

Investors are those financial institutions that have shareholdings in the corporate entities that ultimately own the petrochemical facilities. Petrochemical facilities are defined by using the NAICS codes that they disclose to the EPA which is outlined in more detail above.

Planet Tracker used Refinitiv to manually search for the ultimate corporate entities that own these facilities. This was done by taking the facility parent from the TRI dataset and searching in Refinitiv’s database. The investors holding shares in public companies were then taken from Refinitiv and used to link investors to facilities. Note that the shareholding information only relates to the investors’ holding of corporate entities that own petrochemical facilities, and not the facilities themselves.

ANSWERING QUESTIONS / GAINING INSIGHTS

Planet Tracker used Refinitiv to manually search for the ultimate corporate entities that own these facilities. This was done by taking the facility parent from the TRI dataset and searching in Refinitiv’s database. The investors holding shares in public companies were then taken from Refinitiv and used to link investors to facilities. Note that the shareholding information only relates to the investors’ holding of corporate entities that own petrochemical facilities, and not the facilities themselves.

Yes. A PDF of the current view of the dashboard can be created by clicking on the black Download PDF button on each dashboard.

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