"Air emissions" include releases of the subject chemicals to air from point sources (such as stacks of energy production and industrial activities) and fugitive sources (such as transport, agriculture, use of products).

"Discharges to Surface water" include direct releases of the subject chemicals to all surface water bodies such as sea, lakes, rivers, estuaries.

"Releases to land" include direct and indirect releases of the subject chemicals to land bodies (except landfills). Examples of land emissions are underground injections, leaks, spills, surface impoundments. This term is understood in two fundamentally different ways. Bringing a substance/pollutant/chemical to a disposal site where full control of the site is provided (access, drain water, evaporation, etc.), is by some countries understood as a release to land and would by others be reported as a transfer for e.g. disposal. The level of control seem for some countries to exempt this kind of operations from being a release to land, whereas others would call everything placed on the ground a release to land regardless of the level of control. Spreading of waste/material containing substances/pollutants/chemicals of potential concern to farmland or parks, is unanimously considered a release to land.

"Emissions from Landfills" include releases of the subject chemicals contained in wastes. The releases from a landfill can be released to air, water or land.

"Off-site transfers in wastes" are transfers of the subject chemicals contained in wastes transferred for treatment or disposal.

"Off-site transfers of waste" are transfers of waste for treatment, recovery or disposal.

"Off-site transfers to disposal" are transfers of the subject chemicals contained in wastes, or wastes, for disposal. It is to be noted that the definitions of "disposal" and "treatment" by US TRI and the BASEL Convention/OECD Council Decision [C(2001)107/FINAL] differ from each others.Please click here for details.

"Off-site transfers to treatment" are the transfers of the subject chemicals contained in wastes, or wastes, for treatment. It is to be noted that the definitions of "disposal" and "treatment" by US TRI and the BASEL Convention/OECD Council Decision [C(2001)107/FINAL] differ from each others. Please click here for details.

"Off-site transfers for recycling" are transfers of the subject chemicals contained in wastes, or wastes, for recycling.

"Off-site transfers for energy recovery" are transfers of the subject chemicals contained in wastes, or wastes, for energy recovery, e.g. in an industrial boiler, incinerator or cement kiln.

"Transfers to sewerage" are releases of the subject chemicals into the sewerage system destined for wastewater treatment plants.

PRTR database can be searched by specifying certain conditions. A report of the PRTR data can be created by selecting the target years, countries, regions, industry sectors, chemicals, types of sources and types of releases and transfers. Details of these elements are described in the paper entitled "Structure of the database"
When searching for national PRTR data, one can access the list of chemicals, industry sectors, selecting criteria of the subject chemicals and the PRTR homepage of each country, by clicking on the web links under the column of searched data on "Search Result" page.