The introduction of the Integrated Pollution Register (IRZ) more than a year ago was a significant step in informing the public about the emission of dangerous substances by particular industrial companies. ("All choked up," News, Nov. 1–7)

Now that step is under threat as industry lobbyists push for a new law to exempt them from reporting key data in the IRZ, as they have been required to since 2002.

Available online (www.irz.cz), the IRZ survey offers information about 72 chemical substances released in various forms by industrial companies — some in the form of smoke gases, others in wastewater or industrial waste that vanishes underground or leaks into the soil.

Until now, when a citizen wanted to obtain information about a polluting company, he had to go from one office to another and it often happened that he got nearly zero information about chemical waste. That changed with the IRZ, a system similar to those in many other countries. The oldest, the one in use in the United States since 1986, was established after the world's worst-ever industrial disaster in the Union Carbide chemical factory in Bhopal, India, in 1984.

Arnika, a Czech environmentalist foundation, has been compiling data from the register for two years now and publishes a list of facilities that contribute most to air, water or soil pollution. No company is interested in being known as a major environmental polluter.

However, some companies really deserve this label, which works much like a report card does at the end of a school year. Kids try to do better every year, and so do polluters, who try to achieve a better result and lower the level of pollution. This is how registers work in all places where they're available.

Every substance shows a different impact on human health or the environment, which is why it is impossible to point out a major polluter according to a mere grand total of released emissions of pollutants. That's why Arnika concentrates on carcinogenic substances, reprotoxic substances (those that threaten future generations), greenhouse gases, gases contributing to acid rain, substances damaging the ozone layer and persistent organic substances, which are able to survive for a long time and have many negative effects on living organisms even in the lowest quantities.

Evaluating the above substances, the IRZ has registered as most frequent in its top-10 list the following producers: ČEZ (worst are the power plants Prunéřov, Počerady and Mělník); Mittal Steel Ostrava, formerly Nová huť; Třinecké železárny steelworks; Vysoké pece metallurgy, Ostrava; International Power Opatovice brown coal power plant; DEZA, Valašské Meziříčí chemical factory; Spolek pro chemickou a hutní výrobu, chemical factory and metallurgy, Ústí nad Labem; and Spolana chemical factory, Neratovice.

The biggest polluters in Prague are: Radotín cement works and two plants in Malešice: the municipal garbage incinerator and the heating plant.

When compiling its list of major polluters, Arnika used data that served as the source of the IRZ for 2005. However, in the IRZ, users will not find a clear graphic from which it would be easy to say who the major polluters were in 2005. And since the government has so far failed to introduce any complex program that would motivate companies to lessen pollution, the database remains one of the most useful tools leading to a decline in toxic waste emissions. This is why Arnika has analyzed the data for two years now, and it is also why Arnika publishes the data. A public register and an emissions reduction motivation program has led to a 46 percent decline in toxic waste emissions in the United States. This was achieved in just five years — from 1988 to 1993.

After the list of major polluters in the Czech Republic was published in 2005, numerous companies promised to lower the amount of emissions. Many of these companies fulfilled their promise. For example, Federal-Mogul Friction Products in Kostelec nad Orlicí lowered emissions of trichloroethylene — a substance likely to be carcinogenic to humans — to one-third. And the Opava-based Ivax Pharmaceuticals lowered emissions of a possible carcinogen, dichlormethane, to one-third. Check out the emissions decline on at bezjedu.arnika.org/irz.shtml.

A total of 965 industrial facilities supplied data to this year's IRZ, which is 94 companies more than in 2005, but still far fewer than the thousands of facilities estimated to contribute to pollution before the introduction of the IRZ. Ammonia was the most frequently reported substance, indicated at 483 facilities. A good number of substances on the current IRZ list, 17 out of 72, weren't reported at all. The main polluters were reported in the following regions: Moravia-Silesia, Ústí nad Labem, Central Bohemia, Pardubice, Zlín and Olomouc.

In industry, we see energy, metallurgy and chemical plants as the major pollutants. Garbage disposal plants moved up on the pollutants' list this year. And still relatively high are companies operating in the shoe, plastic, furniture and metal processing areas. Depending on the actions of the Environmental Ministry, these last may also be areas the public is shut out of in two years' time.

The register has proven to function well and is a much-called-for tool in informing the public about the emission of dangerous substances by particular companies. Despite this, or perhaps because of it, changes are being made to the register as the result of pressure from the industrial lobby. A draft version of the IRZ law is now under consideration at the Environmental Ministry, under which neither citizens nor the state administration would learn about the amount of toxic materials in waste.

But it is clear there is no other similar information source available that offers such easy public access. The decision as to whether this tool for limiting toxic emissions will be deprived of one of its vital components now entirely rests with the government.