PollutionScan — EPA Environmental Violations & Compliance Explorer
From toxic releases to Superfund sites: millions of public EPA records, reorganized into one searchable reference for the US.
Why this exists
The EPA publishes an ocean of environmental data — facility emissions, enforcement penalties, contaminated-site investigations — but it is scattered across separate programs and databases that few people know how to join up. PollutionScan pulls those records into a single searchable place, aimed at residents wondering what sits near their home, local reporters, and community groups.
It is one of my own products: I conceived it, built it and grew it myself rather than delivering it for a client.
What you can do with it
- Search facilities by name, city or ZIP code with instant results and compliance grades inline.
- Read A–F compliance grades per facility, derived from violations, penalties and inspections.
- Get a neighbourhood Environment Score: type a ZIP code, receive an A–F environmental grade for the area.
- Browse by federal program — Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA waste, drinking water, TRI toxic releases and greenhouse gases.
- Open facility profiles showing compliance history, penalty totals and cleanup status.
- Learn from in-depth guides on Superfund, air-quality monitoring, and how emissions relate to actual risk.
Coverage and numbers
The homepage counters speak for themselves: 3,065,109 facilities indexed, 105,612 with violations, $12,660M in penalties tracked, 52 states, 6 EPA programs. Individual enforcement cases in the index run past the billion-dollar mark.
Explore it yourself: Visit pollutionscan.com
How it's built
There is no CMS underneath — a bespoke Laravel + PHP application with Alpine.js for the live search, on top of a MySQL database engineered to serve millions of facility pages fast, each with clean URLs and structured data.
Traffic comes from programmatic SEO: state, program and facility pages are generated at scale with their own titles, descriptions and internal linking — no hand-written landing pages, no plugins.
Why it matters in my portfolio
- Data integration: six federal programs with mismatched schemas merged into one model.
- Throughput: three million+ facility pages served, each with a computed compliance grade.
- Product thinking: the A–F scoring layer turns raw records into an answer people actually understand.
Frequently asked questions
Which data does PollutionScan rely on?
Public EPA records spanning six federal programs: the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA hazardous waste, Safe Drinking Water, Toxic Releases (TRI) and greenhouse gas reporting.
How are the A–F grades worked out?
Each facility receives a compliance grade built from its recorded violations, penalties and inspection history, so environmental performance can be judged at a glance.
How many facilities does it cover?
More than 3 million regulated facilities across 52 states, over 105,000 of them with violations on record and a combined $12.6 billion in tracked penalties.
Can I check my own neighbourhood?
Yes — the Environment Score tool grades any US ZIP code from A to F using the facility, emissions and violation data recorded for that area.