PERI's Toxic and Greenhouse 100 Indexes Name Top Climate, Air, and Water Polluters

PERI researchers Michael Ash and James Boyce along with Rich Puchalsky released the latest yearly editions of Toxic 100, which list the top corporate air and water polluters and top greenhouse gas emitters in the U.S, based on the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The indexes, created as part of PERI’s Corporate Toxics Information Project, once again include environmental justice indicators to assess impacts on low-income people and minorities.

New this year is the Greenhouse Suppliers 100 Index, which ranks U.S. corporations by their 2020 supply of products that result in greenhouse gas emissions when the products are released, combusted, or oxidized. This new list joins the Greenhouse 100 Index, which ranks U.S. companies by their emissions responsible for global climate change according to the EPA Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, and the Toxic 100 Air and Toxic 100 Water Indexes, which rank U.S. industrial polluters using the EPA Toxics Release Inventory. 

The top 10 companies on this year’s inaugural Greenhouse Suppliers 100 list are Marathon Petroleum, Phillips 66, Valero Energy, Exxon Mobil, Peabody Energy, Enterprise Products Partners, Chevron, BP, Arch Resources, and Shell PLC. 

The Greenhouse 100 Index ranks companies by 2020 direct emissions of greenhouse gasses from large sources. The top 10 companies are Vistra Energy, Duke Energy, Southern Company, Berkshire Hathaway, American Electric Power, Energy Capital Partners, NextEra Energy, Xcel Energy, the U.S government, and Exxon.

The Toxic 100 Air Polluters Index reports that the top 10 companies in terms of total potential chronic human health risk are LyondellBasell, BASF, Becton Dickinson, Salzgitter, Huntsman, Dow Inc, Canopus International, Celanese, Berkshire Hathaway, and NOV Inc.

The Toxic 100 Water Polluters Index ranks Northrop Grumman, LyondellBasell, NextEra Industries, Dow Inc., and Cargill as the top five water polluters.

A search tool provides information on every company, not only the top 100, reporting to the Toxics Release Inventory, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program, or the EIA-7A coal mine survey.  Other PERI/CTIP data tools include Air Toxics at School and the Coal Producers Index.

The complete Toxic 100 and Greenhouse 100 lists and full press release can be found online at http://toxic100.org/.