Editing Kotzebue, Alaska (section)

==Toxins==
Although no "toxic releases" come from within the bounds of Kotzebue, the methods used by the [[United States Environmental Protection Agency|U.S. Environmental Protection Agency]] (EPA)'s in their Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI) reports that in 2016, Kotzebue, with only 7,500 inhabitants, "produced" 756 million pounds of toxins.(Due to the way the EPA defines toxins, even the discharge of filtered and pH balanced water is called a toxin.) The TRI placed Kotzebue as the most toxic place in the United States. The second most toxic was Bingham Canyon, Utah at 200 million pounds of toxins. However, as ''National Geographic'' explains, the source of the toxins is not Kotzebue, but Alaska's [[Red Dog mine]].<ref name="nationalgeographic_20180221">{{Cite magazine| title = America's Most 'Toxics-Releasing' Facility Is Not Where You'd Think|first=Justin |last=Nobel| magazine = National Geographic News| access-date =February 2, 2020| date = February 21, 2018| url = https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/most-toxic-town-us-kotzebue-alaska-red-dog-mine/| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20200202213527/https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2018/02/most-toxic-town-us-kotzebue-alaska-red-dog-mine/| url-status = dead| archive-date = February 2, 2020}}</ref> Since the mine is located in a remote area in Alaska, the toxic release is linked to the nearest "city"— Kotzebue.<ref name="nationalgeographic_20180221"/> The EPA says that when a "facility" is "not located in a city, town, village, or similar entity will often list a nearby city." ''National Geographic'' says that, "All 756 million pounds of toxic chemicals attributed to "Kotzebue" on the TRI dataset came from one of the world's largest zinc and lead mines, the Red Dog mine, which is located about 80 miles north of Kotzebue."<ref name="nationalgeographic_20180221"/> At the county level the Northwest Arctic of Alaska leads the list with 756,000,000 pounds of toxins. The state of Alaska produces three times more toxins than every other American state—834 million pounds.<ref name="forbes_20171107">{{Cite magazine| last = Priceonomics| title = The Most (And Least) Toxic Places In America| magazine = Forbes|date=November 7, 2017| access-date = February 2, 2020| url = https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2017/11/07/the-most-and-least-toxic-places-in-america/}}</ref>