Indiana's power plants and factories dumped fewer poisons into the air and water last year, new figures show.

Continuing a five-year decline in emissions, the pollution from Hoosier smokestacks was down 19 percent in 2009, compared with the year before, while the toxins pumped into the state's lakes and rivers fell by 27 percent.

The numbers are shown in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's preliminary report from its Toxic Release Inventory, an annual calculation of the pollution released by the nation's polluters.

In the past, the EPA released the data more than a year after it was gathered; last year the agency began releasing a preliminary report just weeks after it was due from permit holders. Officials estimate it contains about 95 percent of the data that will be in the final report.

After five years of declines, the amount of toxins released to the air is down 39 percent from 2005, the report shows.

Indiana Department of Environmental Management officials declined to comment on the report because it's only preliminary data, and they want to wait until the final report is prepared, which is expected in December. But they did say that the drops in pollution seen so far have been much larger than the declines in the economy.

"(Manufacturers) have reduced pollution per part at least 20 percent," said Rick Bossingham, assistant commissioner of IDEM's Office of Pollution Prevention. "So the reductions go beyond what you would expect from just the economy."

A better measure is the state's utilities, which were responsible for more than two-thirds of the air pollution in the report. According to the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis, the gross domestic product for Indiana utilities was up an average of 9 percent from 2005 to 2008, even while the amount of pollution released to the air plunged.

"(Industries) are more efficient," Bossingham said.

Tons of poison

In Allen County, the largest manufacturer continued to be the largest emitter of pollutants: General Motors' truck assembly plant released 447,292 pounds of pollutants to the air in 2009, according to the report. Most of that release is trimethylbenzene, which is suspected to harm the cardiovascular system, the brain and respiratory systems, and n-butyl alcohol, which is suspected of harming the same organs, as well as the digestive system and skin.

A distant second in Allen County was Lincoln Foodservice Products, which released 60,100 pounds of trichloroethylene, the chemical at issue in the 1998 John Travolta movie, "A Civil Action."

Trichloroethylene causes cancer and is believed to harm lungs, skin, the liver, kidneys, the brain and reproductive organs.

Lincoln Foodservice Products' 2009 releases of the chemical were less than half of what they were in 2007, records show.

In northeast Indiana outside of Allen County, the biggest air polluters were R.R. Donnelley & Sons in Warsaw; Louis Dreyfus Agricultural Industries in Claypool; Bunge in Decatur; Therma-Tru in Butler; and Frontline Manufacturing in Warsaw.

R.R. Donnelley & Sons' emissions were mostly toluene, which harms development and is suspected of causing a host of other problems. Louis Dreyfus' air emissions were mostly n-hexane, suspected of harming development, the brain and the respiratory and reproductive systems.

David Van Gilder, a Fort Wayne attorney and Hoosier Environmental Council board member, said he has trouble believing that the drop in air pollution is only from greater efficiencies.

"I just don't really buy that," Van Gilder said. "I'm sure there are certain manufacturing concerns that have worked diligently to reduce pollutants, but historically, the cost-savings for industry have been in cutting corners, not in installing new control technologies."

The annual Toxic Release Inventory is compiled by the EPA from reports companies submit. It started in 1988, required by laws passed in response to a chemical release in Bhopal, India, that killed thousands of people.

The Toxic Release Inventory covers about 22,000 facilities that handled 650 toxic chemicals. Of those chemicals, 179 were known or suspected carcinogens, the EPA said.

dstockman@jg.net