Mapping Pollution with Google Earth

Want to see where the pollution is coming from in North America? Now you can through a partnership of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation and Google. You’ll be able to locate pollution reported from 33,000 industrial facilities in Canada, Mexico and the U.S, how exciting!

Just enter your zip code or city name to zoom in. You’ll find inforation on the kinds of pollution produced and how the facility handles it. You can compare the performance of facilities in one community to similar ones locally, nationally, and across North America.

The Information comes from publicly accessible “pollutant release and transfer registers,” (PRTRs), which are maintained separately by the three North American countries: the National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) in Canada, the Registro de Emisiones y Transferencias de Contaminantes (RETC) in Mexico, and the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) in the United States.

Using this data as a starting point, the CEC publishes the annual Taking Stock – a report that provides an apples-to-apples snapshot of North American industrial emissions and trends.

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