From the Lawrence Daily Journal-World for August 1, 1989:

Douglas County ranked 236th among U.S. counties dumping the largest amount of toxic chemicals into the air, water, and ground in 1987, according to a story in today’s issue of USA Today. The story was based on the newspaper’s computer analysis of the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s recently announced 1987 Toxic Release Inventory and claimed that the most common chemical released in Douglas County was ammonia, ranked as “acutely toxic” by federal environmental standards. The second most common toxic chemical discharged in the county was ammonium nitrate. An EPA spokesman in Kansas City, Kan., said today that both chemicals were used in fertilizer production and were being discharged mainly by the Farmland Industries plant east of Lawrence. A spokesman for U.S. Rep. Jim Slattery, D-Kan., said the congressman was planning to study the EPA data to decide whether stricter limits should be placed on such emissions.