Frickel, Elliot, and a large team of student collaborators created what they call a “Historically Hidden Industrial Database” (HHID). This comprised comprehensive longitudinal series of data about the location (street address) and type of industrial activity of manufacturing in key sectors highly likely to produce localized hazardous wastes, as well as patterns of urban succession in which residential communities occupied sites where polluting manufacturing had once taken place. They drew this data from census records and from annual state-level commercial registers—works with titles like Oregon Directory of Manufacturing. The researchers found that these registers contained much more information about historical industrial activities than government-generated databases, enabling them to assess gaps in government-generated registries used for regulatory purposes and to provide present-day community members with more extensive information about possible legacy pollutants in their neighborhoods.
