To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs if he will institute an inventory of all emissions of hexavalent chromium in the UK.

The National Atmospheric Emissions Inventory contains an estimate of all the UK's chromium emissions to air. The UK Pollutant Release and Transfer Register contains details of significant emissions of chromium to air and to water from individual industrial installations. Both these sources are readily accessible through DEFRA's website.

Measurements of hexavalent chromium emissions are not routinely made, given the lack of agreed measurement methods. A national inventory of hexavalent chromium with acceptable accuracy and precision is therefore not available. The measurement methods generating the information on total chromium emissions held in the inventory and register include hexavalent chromium and therefore the information provides a “worst case” picture.