How do I search National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) data for a specific facility's reported releases and transfers in Canada? Cover the NPRI online data search tool, the NPRI map, the open data downloads (bulk datasets on the Open Government Portal), what substances and years are covered, and the reporting thresholds that determine which facilities appear.

To look up one facility's releases and transfers in Canada, start with ECCC's NPRI data search. You can search by company name, facility name or NPRI ID. For multi-year or multi-facility analysis, use the bulk files on the Open Government Portal, which cover 1993 to the latest year. The map layers show where facilities are. Whether a facility appears at all depends on the NPRI reporting thresholds, mainly 20,000 employee hours plus substance-specific quantity and concentration limits.

Approach: I searched the NPRI reporting-facilities register and the NPRI ten-year aggregate tables, then checked ECCC, Open Government Portal and Canada Gazette pages. Facts from the web come from search snippets, not full pages.

1. NPRI data search (the online tool)

• Where: pollution-waste.canada.ca/national-release-inventory, linked from ECCC's "Access to the NPRI" page.
• What it holds: releases to air, water and land, disposals, and transfers for recycling, as reported by each facility. It also has pollution prevention information.
• Ways to search: company or facility name, NPRI ID, pollutant, industry, province or territory, or watershed.
• Years: reviewed data for 1993 to 2024 and preliminary 2025 data. Preliminary data come out around July so facilities can check and correct their own reports. Reviewed data follow around December, after ECCC's quality control. Figures pulled before then may still contain reporting errors.
• Older facility reports: an archived version of the search still gives per-facility, per-year reports (the "Detailed Facility Information" view, keyed on NPRI ID and report year).

Tip: find the NPRI ID first, because names change and are reused. In the reporting-facilities register, two unrelated companies (CEDA-REACTOR LTD., NPRI ID 6547, and Air Products Canada Ltd., NPRI ID 7053) both report a facility simply named "SARNIA" ^[1][2]. Each register entry gives:

• year of last filed report
• address and coordinates
• NAICS code and key industrial sector
• census geography, ecozone and major drainage area

^[3]

2. NPRI map

• "Maps of reporting facilities" are published on the Open Government Portal. There is a facility-location layer and separate layers for releases to air, water and land, disposals and transfers.
• Formats are ESRI REST (for ArcGIS), WMS, and KMZ for virtual-globe software such as Google Earth. The KMZ files cover the last two reporting years.
• You can filter by province or industry. Selecting a facility opens a summary of its releases, disposals and transfers.

3. Open data downloads (Open Government Portal)

• "Bulk data files for all years – releases, disposals, transfers and facility locations": CSV files in list format covering 1993 to the latest year. There are separate files for:

  • releases
  • disposals (including tailings and waste rock)
  • transfers for recycling or treatment
  • facility comments

  Filter on the NPRI ID to pull one facility's full history.

• "Database – all data for all years": the full NPRI dataset in Microsoft Access (.accdb) format.

• "Single year data tables by facility": one reporting year per table, covering releases, transfers and disposals.

• Reporting facilities list: one row per facility, with latest year filed, location and sector ^[1].

• Ten-year tables (2015-2024): totals by province, industry and substance for air, land and water. These are aggregates with no facility-level detail. Examples for 2024 air releases:

  • total VOCs: 263,251 tonnes from 4,578 facilities ^[4]
  • unspeciated PAHs: 8.2 tonnes from 51 facilities ^[5]

4. Substances and years covered

• Years: 1993 to 2024 reviewed, 2025 preliminary. ECCC describes the inventory as tracking over 300 pollutants from over 7,000 facilities.
• Substance list: five parts, each with its own reporting requirements:

Part	Content	Examples
1A	Core substances	ammonia, benzene, nickel
1B	Alternate (lower) thresholds	arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury
1C	PFAS (new)	—
2	Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)	—
3	Dioxins, furans, hexachlorobenzene	—
4	Criteria air contaminants (CACs)	CO, NOx, total particulate matter, SO₂, total VOCs
5	Speciated VOCs	ethanol, formaldehyde, propane

• Current notice: the "Notice with respect to the substances in the NPRI for 2025, 2026 and 2027" was published in Canada Gazette Part I on 8 March 2025. It:

  • added 163 PFAS as new Part 1 Group C
  • added 92 long-chain aliphatic amines and free cyanide, cyanide salts and cyanide complexes to Part 1 Group B
  • set deadlines of 1 June 2026 for 2025 data and 1 June 2027 for 2026 data

  Because the list changes over time, check that a substance was reportable in a given year before reading a missing entry as a zero. ECCC's "History of reporting requirements" page tracks these changes.

5. Thresholds that decide which facilities appear

• Employee threshold: 20,000 or more hours worked at the facility in the calendar year (about 10 full-time employees). Overtime and paid leave count.
• Core (Part 1A) substances: 10 tonnes or more manufactured, processed or otherwise used, at 1% concentration or more. By-products are counted whatever their concentration.
• Lower or alternate thresholds apply to Part 1B, Parts 2 and 3 (PAHs, dioxins, furans, HCB) and Parts 4 and 5. The exact figures are on ECCC's "Substance list by threshold" page and in the 2025-2027 reporting guide. I did not confirm those figures from an official source here, so I don't give them.
• Activities that must report whatever the employee hours, provided the substance thresholds are met:
  • hazardous waste incineration
  • sewage sludge incineration
  • non-hazardous solid waste incineration of 26 tonnes or more of waste
  • wood preservation (heat and/or pressure)
  • terminal operations
  • wastewater collection systems discharging an average of 10,000 m³/day or more to surface water
  • pits and quarries producing 500,000 tonnes/year or more

So if a facility is missing for a year, it most likely fell below these thresholds that year. It does not mean the facility had no releases.

I can look up a specific facility's NPRI ID and sector in the register next, or pull 2015-2024 totals for a substance or province.

Sources:

• Access to the NPRI
• NPRI data search
• NPRI Data Search (archive)
• Explore NPRI data
• Bulk data files for all years
• Database – all data for all years
• Single year data tables by facility
• Maps of reporting facilities
• Maps – virtual globe format
• NPRI data highlights 2024
• Substance list by threshold
• Canada Gazette Part I, 8 March 2025, NPRI notice
• Reporting requirements fact sheet
• Guide for reporting to the NPRI 2025-2027
• Guide for Reporting to the NPRI 2000, section 2