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RMP Search

About the Data


This topic contains a number of "standard reports", types of searches that are often done on RMP data. The searches include:

Area
Selects a report that will give data on all facilities in a geographic area, such as a state, county, city, or zip code. It will also allow you to select specific chemicals.
Example: You want to know about all facilities in P. G. County, MD.
Facility
Selects a report that will give you data on a particular facility.
Example: You are interested in the Rhone Poulenc plant in your town.
Industry
Selects a report that will give data on all facilities that have the same NAICS code, or industrial classification.
Example: You want to find out how much pollution is caused by the Paper industry in your state.
Parent
Selects a report that will give data on all facilities owned by a particular parent company.
Example: You want to know what facilities Du Pont owns in your area.
Accident
This report allows you to search for all facilities that have had at least one accident of a particular type.
Example: You want to know which facilities have had accidents involving flammable chemicals in your state.

Area Search

Area reports are intended to help you find out about all facilities within a geographic area - a zip code, city, county, or state. A particular chemical can be specified to restrict the search if desired.

Facility Search

Facility reports are intended to help you find information about a single facility. You can select the facility by specifying its name. Names of facilities will often change from year to year, but the names of the cities that they are located in generally do not. Fill in only the first letter of the facility name if you're not sure how it's spelled. If you also fill in the city and state, you will be likely to find the facility that you want. If you're not sure of the first letter, try the Area search.

Industry Search

Industry reports are intended to help you find out what pollutants are coming from facilities that have a particular NAICS code, or industrial classification. You can specify the facilities you want by NAICS code, state, and chemical. Note that many facilities produce more than one kind of product, and have more than one NAICS code. A facility will show up in the results of this search if any of its NAICS codes match the one you selected.

Parent Search

Parent reports are intended to help you find information on all facilities owned by a particular parent company. This kind of report can be very inaccurate since parent company names are often misspelled or not filled in on RMP submissions. Parent company Dun and Bradstreet numbers are sometimes incorrect as well. For this reason you can never be sure that you have found all of the facilities owned by a particular company. The report lets you specify the parent company you want by either its name or D&B number. You can also restrict the search to a particular state. You can also choose to search for joint parents and operators in addition to the main or first parent.

Accident Search

An accident search will retrieve all facilities that have had at least one accident matching your criteria. The search will retrieve all data for those facilities, including information on other accidents they have had that may not match your criteria. You can specify accidents by the city, county, or state that they occured in, or by a chemical involved in the accident. You can also choose to include only accidents with damages -- deaths, injuries, evacuations, property damage, or offsite environmental effects. You can also choose to search for accidents specifically involving toxic or flammable chemicals.

Field Information

Help is available for the following fields:

 All/Main Parent Search Field
  • Accident Type Field
  • Accident Damages Field

  • Chemical Name Field

    This field provides a list of all chemicals that exist within the RMP database, except those that are listed by a state only instead of Federally. For the Area and Industry reports, the search uses chemicals listed as occuring within processes onsite. For the Accident report, the search uses chemicals listed as occuring in accidents.

    City Field

    Fill in the name of the city that you want. Some RMP submissions have their city name misspelled; others have two varient spellings for the same city or county. For instance, there may be submissions that spell their city name either ST. LOUIS or SAINT LOUIS. If you think this may be a factor, you can either run your search twice or use "*" to represent any characters. In the case above you could enter "S*LOUIS" and find both spellings. Watch out for FORT/FT., SAINT/ST., and MOUNT/MT.

    County Field

    Fill in the name of the county that you want - do not fill in the word "county" or "parish" after counties. Some RMP submissions have their county misspelled; others have two varient spellings for the same county. You can use * as a wildcard to get around this problem. For instance, filling PRINCE GEORGE* would find both PRINCE GEORGES county and PRINCE GEORGE'S county.

    Level of Detail Field

    This field selects the level of detail you want in your report:

    Summary
    The report will produce a list of hits only. This gives very little information, but can be helpful if you only want one facility but know that if will be somewhere within a long list returned by your search. You can click in its name to get full information about it.
    Low
    The report will produce a header of basic facility information for each facility. This information includes name, address, parent, public contact, totals, and various ID numbers.
    Medium
    The report gives all the data that Low would plus a breakdown of processes and accidents.
    High
    The report gives all the data that Medium would plus the executive summary and other descriptions. It includes all RMP fields. Use this option if you want the maximum detail available through this program -- but be warned that this option often takes a lot of time and produces a large amount of output. It is best used only for a search that you expect to find only a few facilities, if possible.

    Output Type Field

    This field selects what output style your report will have. Note that the machine-readable formats don't produce as many data fields as the human-readable version, because of the complex structure of this database.
    Text
    The report will produce human-readable ASCII text.
    Comma-delimited ASCII
    The report will produce a table of data with the columns separated by commas. Character fields will by surrounded by double quotes so that any commas in them won't be read as column delimiters. This style of output is suitable for loading into a database such as Dbase.
    Tab-delimited ASCII
    The report will produce a table of data with the columns separated by tabs. This style of output is suitable for loading into databases such as Excel.

    Dun & Bradstreet Number Field

    The Parent company Dun & Bradstreet number is a 9-digit number that is supposed to uniquely identify the company. You may be able to find the D&B number for the company you are interested in by doing a search on one of the company's facilities that you know about or by outside research. Specifying the D&B number of a company will usually produce a more accurate search than searching by company name, although some D&B numbers in the database are misspelled or blank. You will usually want to leave the name field blank if you are searching by D&B, although you can search on both for greater assurance that the facilities you are finding really do belong to the company that you are interested in.

    Facility Name Field

    Fill in the facility name in this field if you know it.

    Warning! Facility names are often misspelled when submitted to EPA. In addition, many facilities change their names from year to year. For these reasons, enter as few letters as are necessary to specify the facility, followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters. This will help you find the facility even if its name changes or is misspelled. Example: You want to find a Du Pont facility. Possible spellings of facility name:

    1. DU PONT CO.
    2. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMEURS
    3. DUPONT
    4. DU PONT MICHIGAN PLANT
    If you entered "DU PONT" into the name field, you wouldn't have found any of these spellings. On the other hand, if you entered "DU PONT*", you would have found spellings 1 and 4. To find all of these you would need to enter "*DU*PONT*". If you're not very sure of the facility name it is often better to leave this field blank and get a list of all facilities in the     city that your facility of interest is in.

    Parent Company Field

    Fill in the parent company name here if you know it. Warning! Parent company names are often misspelled when submitted to EPA. In addition, some companies change their names from year to year. For these reasons, enter as few letters as are necessary to specify the company, followed by a "*" to represent any number of letters. This will help you find the company even if its name changes or is misspelled. Example: You want to find facilities owned by Du Pont. Possible spellings of company name:

    1. DU PONT CO.
    2. E. I. DU PONT DE NEMEURS
    3. DUPONT
    4. DU PONT MICHIGAN PLANT
    If you entered "DU PONT" into the name field, you wouldn't have found any of these spellings. On the other hand, if you entered "DU PONT*", you would have found spellings 1 and 4. To find all of these you would need to enter "*DU*PONT*". If you're not very sure of the facility name it is often better to leave this field blank and get a list of all facilities in the     city that your facility of interest is in.

    State Field

    If you wish to search on the entire US, select the "ALL" value for this field.

    NAICS Field

    NAICS codes are 6-digit numbers that represent specific industries. More general industrial categories are represented by the first 2 to 5 characters of the codes. These replace the SIC codes. The first form will let you choose only general 2 or 3 digit NAICS codes. If you wish to search for more specific ones, change the select field below the NAICS from No to Yes, and after you submit the form a new one will appear that will let you choose a NAICS code within the one that you selected.

    Zip Code Field

    Fill in the zip code for the area that you want. If you fill in a 5-digit zip code, the program will automatically put a "*" after it. The "*" represents any number of characters and will let your search find 9-digit zip codes that start with the 5 digits you entered. Don't fill in dashes.
    Example:
    If you enter 20740*
    this will find

    • 20740
    • 207401122
    • 207403465
    • etc.

    Accident Type Field

    This field lets you choose whether you want to search for facilities that have specifically had accidents involving flammable or toxic chemicals.

    Accident Damages Field

    This field lets you search for accidents involving deaths, injuries, evacuations, property damage, or offsite environmental effects.