Do you have to file a TRI Form R? Three questions decide it

This page explains what the rules and common practice call for. Every site is different, and what a survey or a filing needs at your facility is something we work out with you after we see it.

Three questions decide it, and you need a yes to all three.

The Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) is the annual report on toxic chemical releases that facilities file with EPA. You file it on Form R, the full report, or on Form A, the shorter one.

EPA's rule sets the test:

1. Do you have 10 or more full-time employees?
2. Are you in a covered industry?
3. Did you manufacture, process or otherwise use more of a listed chemical than the reporting threshold for that activity?

Most facilities that get this wrong get it wrong on the third question. Usually they have misclassified what they do with a chemical, or they are relying on an exemption that no longer applies to them.

Question 1: Do you have 10 or more full-time employees?

This is a count of hours, not a head count.

EPA's rule defines a full-time employee as 2,000 hours per year of full-time equivalent employment. Add up the hours all employees worked during the calendar year and divide by 2,000. Ten full-time employees comes to 20,000 total hours.

Contract workers count, and the definition says so explicitly. Leaving them out is the most common way a facility concludes it is below the employee threshold when it is not. If you run lean with a large contract workforce, do the calculation before you assume you are out.

Question 2: Are you in a covered industry?

EPA's rule lists the covered industries in three tables. The first uses the older SIC codes, with exceptions. The second uses the NAICS codes that correspond to SIC 20–39, which is manufacturing, and the third uses NAICS codes for industries outside that range.

(Worth knowing: the rule still contains both code systems. It maps the NAICS codes to the SIC codes and keeps both, so it is not accurate to say this rule replaced SIC codes with NAICS codes. In practice, your 6-digit NAICS code determines whether you are covered.)

The covered industry groups, with the limitations that apply to each, are:

• Manufacturing: codes 31–33
• Metal mining and coal mining: code 212
• Electric power generation: codes 221111–221122, limited to facilities that burn coal, oil or both to generate power for distribution in commerce. A gas-fired, nuclear or solar generator is not covered by this entry.
• Hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal: codes 562211, 562212, 562213, 562219 and 562920. These are covered only where the facility is regulated under the federal hazardous waste law (RCRA subtitle C). A landfill for non-hazardous solid waste is not covered. Solvent recovery is a separate entry, code 562112, and it applies only to facilities that provide solvent recovery services on a contract or fee basis. Code group 562 as a whole is much broader than what the rule covers.
• Chemical distributors and petroleum bulk terminals: only codes 424690 (other chemical and allied products merchant wholesalers) and 424710 (petroleum bulk stations and terminals), plus 425120. Code group 424 as a whole is not covered.
• Natural gas processing: code 211130, limited to facilities classified under SIC 1321 (natural gas liquids). A 2021 rule added SIC 1321 to the covered list with no limitation tied to sulfur recovery (section 372.23(a)). A natural gas processing plant that recovers no sulfur is covered. That rule appears in the Federal Register at 86 FR 66953, dated November 24, 2021. It took effect December 27, 2021 and first applied to RY2022. ("RY" stands for reporting year, the calendar year a report covers.)

More on that last point, because it is easy to get backwards. There is a separate, older entry for code 211130 (section 372.23(b)) that covers facilities once classified under SIC 2819. That older entry, not the gas processing entry, is the one limited to facilities that recover sulfur from natural gas. If you read the sulfur limitation across to all of code 211130, a covered facility looks exempt. Getting this wrong carries a penalty of up to $71,545 per violation, per day.

Read the limitations in the rule line by line, and do not go by the industry name.

The official lists are the rule itself and the searchable list in EPA's GuideME system. EPA has no separate master PDF that it calls the final word.

Question 3: Did you exceed a reporting threshold?

This is where the real analysis is, and where the classification of your activity matters more than the quantity.

The reporting thresholds

The threshold that applies depends on what you do with the chemical.

Notice the gap. The threshold for "otherwise use" is less than half the threshold for manufacture and process, so a facility that classifies an activity as "process" when it is really "otherwise use" can be badly wrong. A facility that uses 15,000 pounds would believe it is 10,000 pounds under the threshold when it is in fact 5,000 pounds over.

The three activities

EPA's rule sorts what you do with a chemical into three activities, in its words "manufacture, process or otherwise use."

Manufacture means to produce, prepare, import or compound a toxic chemical. Two points catch people:

• Importing counts. You can be a "manufacturer" of a chemical you have never made, because you brought it into the customs territory of the United States.
• Coincidental production counts. If a listed chemical is produced as a side effect while you manufacture, process, use or dispose of something else, you manufactured it. EPA calls this coincidental production, and it is how facilities end up reporting chemicals they never bought.

Process means preparing a chemical, after it is manufactured, for distribution in commerce, whether it goes out in the same form, in a different form, or as part of an article. If the chemical leaves your gate in a product, you processed it.

Otherwise use means any use not covered by manufacture or process, including a chemical in a mixture, in a trade name product, or in waste.

That last part matters, with a limitation. A facility that receives a chemical in waste from off-site for further waste management is otherwise using it, at the lower threshold of 10,000 pounds. But disposing of, stabilizing or treating your own waste is not, by itself, otherwise use. The rule's definition excludes those activities unless the material came from off-site.

Chemicals with lower reporting thresholds

EPA maintains a list it calls chemicals of special concern. The list contains the persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic (PBT) chemicals and also PFAS, a family of long-lasting synthetic chemicals. These have their own, far lower thresholds:

That table is a short list of what comes up most often, not the whole special-concern list (section 372.28 of the rule). The list also includes aldrin, benzo(g,h,i)perylene, chlordane, heptachlor, hexachlorobenzene, HHCB, isodrin, methoxychlor, octachlorostyrene, pendimethalin, pentachlorobenzene, tetrabromobisphenol A, toxaphene and trifluralin.

Polycyclic aromatic compounds are worth flagging. They reach coke, asphalt, foundry and carbon-electrode operations, which often do not think of themselves as filers for PBT chemicals. Everything else in this section turns on whether a chemical is on the special-concern list.

205 PFAS were reportable for RY2025. One more was added effective January 1, 2026: sodium perfluorohexanesulfonate (CAS number 82382-12-5). The count grows every year automatically under a 2020 federal defense law (the 2020 NDAA), so EPA does not have to decide to list each one. It issues a conforming rule each cycle to bring the printed list up to date. Check the current list, not a number you read somewhere.

Note that the lead entry on the special-concern list excludes lead contained in a stainless steel, brass or bronze alloy. The de minimis exemption, explained below, still applies to that lead, which matters to many fabrication and machining shops.

The full TRI chemical list currently contains 810 individually listed chemicals and 34 chemical categories.

The exemptions, and the one that stopped applying

The de minimis exemption

If a listed chemical is present in a mixture at less than 1%, or less than 0.1% if it is a carcinogen, that quantity does not count toward your threshold. This is the de minimis exemption (section 372.38(a)).

But it does not apply to chemicals of special concern, and the dates matter here because they are older than the rule that usually gets the credit.

Chemicals on the special-concern list have been excluded from the de minimis exemption since the 1999 rule on PBT chemicals (the PBT rule, 64 FR 58666), and the exclusion sits in section 372.38(a)(2) of the rule. For mercury, PCBs, and dioxin and dioxin-like compounds, three things have been unavailable since RY2000: the de minimis exemption, Form A and range reporting. Range reporting means reporting certain small quantities as a range instead of an estimate.

Lead came later. A separate rule (66 FR 4500, dated January 17, 2001) added lead and lead compounds to the special-concern list at a threshold of 100 pounds. It took effect February 16, 2001 and first applied to RY2001. Lead was not in the 1999 rule, so the same restrictions applied to lead from RY2001, not RY2000.

The rule of October 31, 2023 (88 FR 74360) did two things. First, it added PFAS to the special-concern list, which swept every PFAS added under the 2020 defense law into the exclusions already in place for the other chemicals of special concern. Second, it did something genuinely new for all chemicals of special concern, the PBT chemicals included. It removed the de minimis exemption from the supplier notification rule (section 372.45(d)(1)). That second change is the only new restriction in the rule, and it binds suppliers who file no Form R of their own. → Supplier notification requirements

The PFAS changes first applied to RY2024, with forms due July 1, 2025. The rule's effective date fell inside RY2023, and EPA applied it starting with RY2024. Guidance that says RY2023 is confusing the effective date with the first reporting year the rule applies to.

A few more points about the de minimis exemption, stated carefully:

• It is a mixture exemption, and it reaches only the quantity in the mixture that qualifies. Anything you handle outside that mixture, or in a mixture at a higher concentration, still counts.
• It does not apply to a chemical in an article.
• It does apply to a chemical you produced yourself, including one created as a side effect of a reaction, as long as the chemical stays in a mixture below the concentration limit. That same section says so explicitly.
• It is optional and it applies on its own, so there is nothing to file.

The article exemption

Chemicals present in an article are exempt. The rule defines an "article" as an item that meets all three of these criteria:

1. It is formed to a specific shape or design during manufacture.
2. Its end use depends on that shape or design.
3. It does not release a toxic chemical under normal conditions of processing or use.

The third criterion is the whole test, and it comes with a narrow allowance worth knowing.

Machining, grinding, cutting, welding or heating the item may generate dust, fume or fine particles that contain a listed chemical, and if it does, article status is at risk. But EPA's reporting instructions say the items keep article status if total releases from all like items are 0.5 pounds or less per year.

Exceed that amount and the exemption fails for that item entirely. The whole quantity of the listed chemical in the item counts toward your threshold, not only the portion released. That is what makes this exemption costly to get wrong, because a few pounds of release can pull tons of chemical into your threshold calculation.

It is the most heavily litigated exemption in the TRI program, and the release criterion is where the court disputes arise.

The other exemptions

The laboratory exemption is narrow. It does not cover specialty chemical production, pilot plant scale manufacture, or anything done outside the laboratory (section 372.38(d)). Where a facility has both a true research laboratory and a scale-up operation, only the laboratory qualifies.

Form R or Form A?

If you exceed a reporting threshold, you file, but you may be able to file the short form.

The rule allows an alternate threshold of 1,000,000 pounds per year for manufacture, process or otherwise use. You can use it only if your annual reportable amount is no more than 500 pounds, a figure that combines releases, disposal, treatment, energy recovery, recycling and transfers. If you qualify, you file a Form A certification statement in place of a full Form R.

Form A is not allowed for chemicals of special concern. The rule states that Form A does not apply to any chemical on the special-concern list, so a PBT chemical or a PFAS can never go on Form A, whatever the quantity. Range reporting is not allowed either, and exact quantities are required. Both restrictions arrived with the listings themselves: 1999 for mercury, PCBs and dioxins, 2001 for lead, 2023 for PFAS. The 2023 rule did not create them. It extended them to PFAS.

One carve-out to check. Lead in a stainless steel, brass or bronze alloy, noted earlier, keeps the ordinary thresholds of 25,000 and 10,000 pounds. Form A, range reporting and the de minimis exemption all remain available for it.

You still have to keep records either way.

Deadlines and how to file

The report is due July 1 for the preceding calendar year. It goes to EPA and to your state (or to tribal officials, for facilities in Indian country).

No extension is available. When July 1 has fallen on a weekend, EPA has in the past accepted filing on the next business day, but nothing in the rule grants that. Treat July 1 as the date and build your schedule to meet it.

You must file electronically. Since the 2013 rule (78 FR 52860, effective January 2014), EPA will not accept reports, revisions or withdrawals on paper, magnetic media or CD-ROM. Everything goes through TRI-MEweb, EPA's online reporting system, and trade secret filings are the only paper exception.

Keep records for 3 years from the date you file, not from the end of the reporting year. The rule also requires that they be kept at the facility and readily available for EPA to inspect. Companies with several sites that keep all records at headquarters are technically in violation of that requirement.

The records to keep are:

• The reports you filed
• Records showing whether the facility is covered
• The data and calculations behind your threshold determination
• Release quantity calculations
• Dates of activity
• Records that support the basis of each estimate
• Transfer receipts and manifests
• Records of waste treatment methods and their efficiency

Where this usually goes wrong

1. Contract workers are left out of the 10-employee count.
2. "Otherwise use" is classified as "process," so a 25,000-pound threshold is applied where 10,000 applies.
3. Coincidentally produced chemicals are missed, because only purchased chemicals were reported.
4. The article exemption is claimed for material that is machined, ground or welded.
5. The de minimis exemption is applied to a chemical of special concern. It has not been available since RY2000 for mercury, PCBs and dioxins, RY2001 for lead, and RY2024 for PFAS.
6. Form A is filed for a PFAS or a PBT chemical. That is never allowed.
7. Imports are overlooked as manufacture.

If you are unsure about any of these, it is worth working through the applicability and threshold determination once, properly. This is the analysis that gets checked, and it is also the one most facilities never document.

Where each part sits in EPA's rule

→ How to calculate releases when you have no monitoring data · What happens if you miss the July 1 deadline