IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jijerp/v14y2017i5p478-d97589.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Australian National Pollutant Inventory Fails to Fulfil Its Legislated Goals

Author

Listed:
  • Nathan Cooper

    (Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney 2052, Australia
    Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Canberra 2601, Australia)

  • Donna Green

    (Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney 2052, Australia
    Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Canberra 2601, Australia)

  • Katrin J. Meissner

    (Climate Change Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Kensington, Sydney 2052, Australia
    Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science, Canberra 2601, Australia)

Abstract

Publically accessible pollution databases, such as the Australian National Pollutant Inventory, contain information on chemical emissions released by industrial facility and diffuse sources. They are meant to enable public scrutiny of industrial activity, which in turn, is meant to lead to industries reducing their pollution. In Australia, however, concerns have been consistently raised that this process is not occurring. To assess whether Australia’s National Pollutant Inventory is fulfilling its legislated goals, we examined the accuracy and consistency of the largest facility and diffuse source of airborne lead, a major pollutant of concern for public health. Our analysis found that the emissions estimates provided by the Inventory were not accurate and were not consistent with other sources of emissions within the Inventory, potentially distorting any user interpretation of emissions estimates provided by the National Pollutant Inventory. We conclude that for at least these important public health pollution sources, the Inventory does not fulfil its legislated goals.

Suggested Citation

  • Nathan Cooper & Donna Green & Katrin J. Meissner, 2017. "The Australian National Pollutant Inventory Fails to Fulfil Its Legislated Goals," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-18, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:5:p:478-:d:97589
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/5/478/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/14/5/478/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Scott Marchi & James Hamilton, 2006. "Assessing the Accuracy of Self-Reported Data: an Evaluation of the Toxics Release Inventory," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 32(1), pages 57-76, January.
    2. Stacey Cowan & Craig Deegan, 2011. "Corporate disclosure reactions to Australia’s first national emission reporting scheme," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 51(2), pages 409-436, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Hendryx & Mohammad Saidul Islam & Guang-Hui Dong & Gunther Paul, 2020. "Air Pollution Emissions 2008–2018 from Australian Coal Mining: Implications for Public and Occupational Health," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(5), pages 1-11, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fraas, Art & Egorenkov, Alex, 2015. "A Retrospective Study of EPA’s Air Toxics Program under the Revised Section 112 Requirements of the Clean Air Act," RFF Working Paper Series dp-15-23, Resources for the Future.
    2. Louie Rivers & Tamara Dempsey & Jade Mitchell & Carole Gibbs, 2015. "Environmental Regulation and Enforcement: Structures, Processes and the Use of Data for Fraud Detection," Journal of Environmental Assessment Policy and Management (JEAPM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 17(04), pages 1-29, December.
    3. Frank Hartmann & Paolo Perego & Anna Young, 2013. "Carbon Accounting: Challenges for Research in Management Control and Performance Measurement," Abacus, Accounting Foundation, University of Sydney, vol. 49(4), pages 539-563, December.
    4. Qian, Wei & Schaltegger, Stefan, 2017. "Revisiting carbon disclosure and performance: Legitimacy and management views," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 365-379.
    5. Jeremy G. Moulton & Nicholas J. Sanders & Scott A. Wentland, 2024. "Toxic Assets: How the Housing Market Responds to Environmental Information Shocks," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 100(1), pages 66-88.
    6. Bauckloh, Michael Tobias & Beyer, Victor & Klein, Christian, 2022. "Does it pay to invest in dirty industries? New insights on the shunned-stock hypothesis," CFR Working Papers 22-07, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    7. Auffhammer, Maximilian & Carson, Richard T., 2006. "Forecasting the Path of China's CO2 Emissions: Offsetting Kyoto - and Then Some," CUDARE Working Papers 7197, University of California, Berkeley, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics.
    8. Alex Hollingsworth & Ivan Rudik, 2021. "The Effect of Leaded Gasoline on Elderly Mortality: Evidence from Regulatory Exemptions," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 13(3), pages 345-373, August.
    9. J. Scott Holladay & Lawrence D. LaPlue, 2021. "Decomposing changes in establishment‐level emissions with entry and exit," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 54(3), pages 1046-1071, November.
    10. Sitsofe Tsagbey & Miguel de Carvalho & Garritt L. Page, 2017. "All Data are Wrong, but Some are Useful? Advocating the Need for Data Auditing," The American Statistician, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 71(3), pages 231-235, July.
    11. Farrelly, Trisia & Tucker, Corrina, 2014. "Action research and residential waste minimisation in Palmerston North, New Zealand," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 11-26.
    12. Mumtaheena Anwar & Sohanur Rahman & Md. Nurul Kabir, 2021. "Does national carbon pricing policy affect voluntary environmental disclosures? A global evidence," Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Springer;Society for Environmental Economics and Policy Studies - SEEPS, vol. 23(2), pages 211-244, April.
    13. Shinsuke Tanaka & Kensuke Teshima & Eric Verhoogen, 2022. "North-South Displacement Effects of Environmental Regulation: The Case of Battery Recycling," American Economic Review: Insights, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 271-288, September.
    14. Zahra Borghei-Ghomi & Philomena Leung, 2013. "An Empirical Analysis of the Determinants of Greenhouse Gas Voluntary Disclosure in Australia," Accounting and Finance Research, Sciedu Press, vol. 2(1), pages 110-110, February.
    15. Dang, Tri Vi & Wang, Youan & Wang, Zigan, 2022. "The role of financial constraints in firm investment under pollution abatement regulation," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    16. Matthew A. Cole & David J. Maddison & Liyun Zhang, 2020. "Testing the emission reduction claims of CDM projects using the Benford’s Law," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 160(3), pages 407-426, June.
    17. Hannah Aoyagi & Oladele A. Ogunseitan, 2015. "Toxic Releases and Risk Disparity: A Spatiotemporal Model of Industrial Ecology and Social Empowerment," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(6), pages 1-19, June.
    18. Ralph Adler & Mansi Mansi & Rakesh Pandey, 2022. "Accounting for waste management: a study of the reporting practices of the top listed Indian companies," Accounting and Finance, Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand, vol. 62(2), pages 2401-2437, June.
    19. De Silva, Dakshina G. & McComb, Robert P. & Schiller, Anita R. & Slechten, Aurelie, 2021. "Firm behavior and pollution in small geographies," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 136(C).
    20. Zou, Eric, 2017. "Unwatched Pollution: The Effect of Incomplete Monitoring on Air Quality," 2017 Annual Meeting, July 30-August 1, Chicago, Illinois 258274, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:14:y:2017:i:5:p:478-:d:97589. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.