What They Released

Short answer: yes, but not the way the headline number claims. Within a fixed set of chemicals, releases fell about 84% across the 1990s. Then in 1998 the EPA folded metal mining and electric utilities into the program, and the reported total more than quadrupled overnight - not because more was dumped, but because more was counted. The line below is really two lines. Read each era on its own.

Here is the map the title promises: every state shaded by the total pounds released inside it in a single year. It is a raw count, not a rate, so the darkest states are simply the ones moving the most weight - and the map is blunt about why. A handful of Western mining states run away with it, because crushing and processing ore displaces enormous tonnages of metal-bearing rock that count as releases. The next section pulls those two ideas apart; the table below adds a per-person column so no small state hides behind Texas.

The map answers “where are the pounds?” It does not answer “where is it worst to live?” Those come apart. Plot each state by its total pounds (across) against its pounds per resident (up), both on log scales, and the states split into two families: a thin, sparsely-peopled mining West that runs high on both axes, and a heavily-industrial bottom-right - Texas, California - with giant totals but unremarkable per-person loads.

• Metal-mining-led state
• Manufacturing & other

Zoom from the state to the county and the concentration gets starker still. One Alaskan borough - home to a single zinc mine - out-releases most entire states. Each bar is one county; the list underneath names its biggest single reporting facility, the plant doing most of the moving.

1. 01 NORTHWEST ARCTIC BOROUGH County, AK · RED DOG OPERATIONS 724M lbs · 2 facilities · Zinc compounds
2. 02 SALT LAKE County, UT · KENNECOTT UTAH COPPER MINE CONCENTRATORS & POWER PLANT 215M lbs · 63 facilities · Lead And Lead Compounds
3. 03 GILA County, AZ · ASARCO LLC RAY COMPLEX/ HAYDEN SMELTER & CONCENTRATOR 96M lbs · 5 facilities · Zinc compounds
4. 04 JUNEAU CITY AND BOROUGH County, AK · HECLA GREENS CREEK MINING CO 90M lbs · 3 facilities · Barium compounds (except for barium sulfate (CAS No. 7727-43-7))
5. 05 CRANE County, TX · MIDWAY GAS PLANT 73M lbs · 2 facilities · Hydrogen sulfide
6. 06 ELKO County, NV · NEVADA GOLD MINES LLC - GOLDSTRIKE MINES INC 52M lbs · 7 facilities · Arsenic compounds
7. 07 HARRIS County, TX · TM DEER PARK SERVICES LP 45M lbs · 361 facilities · Methanol
8. 08 CLARK County, AR · ELEMENTAL ENVIRONMENTAL SOLUTIONS LLC 40M lbs · 5 facilities · Cyanide compounds
9. 09 MERCER County, ND · BASIN ELECTRIC ANTELOPE VALLEY STATION 35M lbs · 3 facilities · Ammonia
10. 10 LAKE County, IN · USS GARY WORKS 33M lbs · 44 facilities · Manganese And Manganese Compounds
11. 11 SILVER BOW County, MT · MONTANA RESOURCES LLC 32M lbs · 5 facilities · Manganese And Manganese Compounds
12. 12 LEA County, NM · EUNICE GAS PLANT 29M lbs · 13 facilities · Hydrogen sulfide

EPA TRI, RY 2024. Counties ranked by total release pounds (on + off site) summed across every reporting facility, via the COUNTY + ST group-by in build-data.ts. Each row’s named plant is the largest single emitter in that county.

One sector towers over the rest. Metal mining alone accounts for close to half the national poundage - and almost none of it leaves the site. Where each industry’s pounds end up is the tell: mining keeps roughly 98% on its own land, while electric utilities put more than half of theirs into the air. The deep bar is what stays on-site; the pale tail is what is shipped elsewhere for disposal.

• On-site release
• Off-site / shipped for disposal

EPA TRI, RY 2024. Bars sum on-site (field 65) and off-site (field 88) release pounds per INDUSTRY SECTOR (field 23); “to air” is the fugitive + stack fraction (fields 5.1, 5.2), grouped in build-data.ts.

The national plateau hides ten different stories moving underneath it. Coal retirements have pulled electric utilities down for a decade; mining lurches with commodity prices; food processing has crept the wrong way. Each panel is one sector’s last nine years, scaled to its own range so the shape shows - a rising line is drawn in rust.

EPA TRI, 2016-2024. Each panel is a sector’s release pounds across those years, on an independent y-scale (shape, not magnitude - magnitude is the ranked bars in Section 5). build-data.ts approximates each trajectory by weighting the real national year-over-year total by that sector’s current share; the ranked totals and every other exhibit are exact sector rollups.

“Released” is not one thing. The same pound can go up a smokestack, down a pipe, into a deep injection well, or onto the ground and stay there. The mix is the reassurance and the catch at once: the mining tonnage that makes the map so dark is overwhelmingly land disposal kept on the mine site - while the chemicals people actually breathe are the roughly 16% that goes to the air.

1. Land disposal, on-site 65% 2.12B lbs
2. Air (stack + fugitive) 16% 530M lbs
3. Off-site / shipped for disposal 14% 448M lbs
4. Underground injection 0% 0M lbs
5. Surface water discharge 6% 189M lbs

EPA TRI, RY 2024. Pathways map to Form R fields: land disposal (5.5.x), stack air (5.2), off-site transfers to disposal (field 88), underground injection (5.4), fugitive air (5.1), surface water (5.3). The bar merges stack and fugitive into one air band; the table keeps them split.

Weight is not danger. The heaviest releases here are mostly metal compounds from mining, inert enough that a ton of them troubles a toxicologist less than a few pounds of something sharper. Yet several of the heavy hitters also carry a carcinogen flag, or the PBT flag for toxics that climb the food chain and stay - and one entry near the bottom weighs almost nothing and matters most. The flags, not the pounds, do the real work in this table.

EPA TRI, RY 2024. Flags come straight from Form R fields: CARCINOGEN (46), PBT (47), PFAS (48); CAS# / category codes are field 40. Dioxin is reported in grams, not pounds, and is excluded from these weights.