Ted Langlois completed his MS thesis with funding from the EPA through the SC E3 program. Ted used the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) to study spatial distributions of various contaminants in the US. Below is the abstract. The full document can be found at Clemson’s Tiger-Prints website; thesis number 2929.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is a collection of data detailing the way hazardous chemicals are handled in industrial facilities. By requiring certain manufacturing facilities to report releases, the EPA offered the public unprecedented access to environmentally relevant data. Since its inception in 1986, the TRI has grown and changed both in chemicals and industries monitored. This thesis uses the data visualization platform Tableau, publicly available yearly TRI reports, and Life cycle impact assessment methodology to create a tool which 1) improves upon previous analyses of the TRI dataset, 2) offers an analysis based on previously underexplored environmental impacts, and 3) creates a simple online tool for communities, industry, and government to use to better identify and target problem areas.
Recommended citation:
Langlois, Theodore Charles, “A Visual Data Analysis of the Toxics Release Inventory” (2018). Clemson University Masters Thesis number 2929. https://tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/2929