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What's the industrial pollution near your home?

Wildfire smoke gets the headlines, but the steady source is closer to home: factories, plants, and yards that report what they release. Here's how to read the NPRI record for any Toronto address.

2 min read

Every summer, wildfire smoke pushes Toronto up the global air-quality rankings for a few bad days, and everyone suddenly checks the AQHI. But smoke blows through. The more permanent question about a specific address is what's released nearby year-round — by the concrete plant, the power station, or the yard down the road.

That's public too. Industrial facilities report their releases to the federal National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI), and you can pull the ones near any address.

What the NPRI record shows

For each facility within range of an address, the record lists:

  • What it is — the company, and its industry (a concrete plant, a power generator, a sewage treatment plant, an aggregate yard).
  • How far away it is, nearest first.
  • What it reported releasing that year, by substance — things like PM2.5 and PM10 (fine particulate), nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, or metals like lead.

One thing the NPRI is not: a health-risk score. It's a count of reported quantities. A big number can be a release to water, not air, and distance and wind matter as much as the raw total. Read it as "what's here and how much," then dig into the specifics.

A real example

Take 1 Carlaw Ave, on the edge of Leslieville near the Port Lands. Within 3 km, the NPRI lists six reporting facilities (2024 data):

  • Portlands Energy Centre, a gas-fired power plant ~855 m away, reported the largest air releases nearby — about 396 tonnes of nitrogen oxides and 304 tonnes of carbon monoxide, plus a couple of tonnes of fine particulate.
  • Dufferin Concrete (~772 m) and a nearby aggregate yard report PM10 and PM2.5 — the dust you'd expect from concrete and gravel.
  • The Ashbridges Bay Treatment Plant posts by far the biggest total tonnage — but almost all of it is nitrate, ammonia, and phosphorus released to water, not something you'd breathe.

That last point is the whole lesson: the largest number on the list is the one you least need to worry about breathing. The record rewards reading, not just ranking.

Why it's worth a look

  • Buying or renting near an industrial edge? Neighbourhoods like the Port Lands, Junction, and parts of Scarborough sit next to working facilities. The record tells you which ones, and what they release.
  • Already living there? It's a baseline. A new facility appearing — or an old one's numbers jumping — is worth noticing.
  • Weighing a "transforming" area? Many of Toronto's redevelopment zones are old industrial land. Some plants are still operating next to the new condos.

Check any address

See the industrial facilities and releases reported near any Toronto address, and pair it with the local air quality view for the wildfire-and-AQHI side of the picture. The property snapshot puts the whole record — permits, orders, environment — in one view, and monitoring will email you if something near your address changes.

Pollution data is sourced from Environment and Climate Change Canada's National Pollutant Release Inventory (2024) and delivered by PropertyMonitorTO.