Scroll down and enter your county in all capital letters and your state’s two-letter abbreviation in capital letters. Then scroll to the bottom of the page and click search. This will result in a chart of EPA-regulated facilities that are included in the TRI (if your county has none, choose another county in your state).
Click one of the TRI Facility ID numbers. This will show identifying information about the facility as well as chemical releases, including the following:
A chart showing the total pounds of air emissions and other emissions by year for the facility as a whole. At the bottom of the chart, you may click a button to see the graphical representation of this information.
A chart showing the total pounds of emissions by year of specific chemicals. For information about the health hazards chemicals released in large quantities, look them up at Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry’s (ATSDR’s) ToxFAQs section.
Use the EPA calculator (available at https://www3.epa.gov/carbon-footprint-calculator/) to estimate the annual emissions from your household, based on your heating system, the number of people in your household, and the amount of driving they do. Briefly describe your findings when you use the calculator.
Discuss what you think the next public health approaches should be for managing the hazards from air pollution, based on your findings on emissions information.
Public Health Approaches to Manage the Hazards from Air Pollution
Based on the findings from the search exercise and calculation of air pollution indoors and outdoors, there is a need for managing the health hazards contributed by carbon emissions, other gases, and dust pollutants. In this case, there is a need for educational forums that inform people, including businesses, on how to use less hazardous raw materials or industrial processes (Ghorani-Azam et al., 2016). This would help them collaborate with agencies like EPA to reduce or prevent pollution to a great extent. Another approach that authorities could implement is promoting renewable fuel use to ensure that transportation fuel is clean with minimal emissions. One strategic way to achieve this would require residents to invest in green cars to contribute to the emission control measures. Worth noting, constant air quality monitoring would enable the authorities to identify additional actions to reduce air pollutants with health risks.
