CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – A report released Thursday ranks a New Hampshire company fourth in the nation for releasing harmful dioxins into the air and water, but company officials are questioning the findings.

Environment New Hampshire based its rankings on information that some 23,000 companies nationwide are required to submit to the federal government each year. According to the most recent data available, the Tillotson Rubber Co. in Dixville Notch released 151 grams of dioxins in 2004. The company at the top of the list, Dow Chemical in Freeport, Tx., released more than three times that amount.

Ron Geurin, Tillotson’s facility manager, was surprised by the findings, and wondered whether his company had overreported its figures or other companies had underreported theirs. The only dioxin the company releases comes from burning wood waste.

“We’re just a little power plant to heat the Balsams hotel,” he said. In addition to dioxins – which have been linked to cancer and other ailments – New Hampshire’s industrial facilities released more than 76,000 pounds of known carcinogens and more than one million pounds of pollutants suspected to cause neurological problems, said Virginia Robnett, field organizer for Environment New Hampshire.

“Unfortunately what the report also reveals is that certain communities are burdened with a disproportionately high volume of this toxic pollution,” she said.

Half the pollutants linked to respiratory ailments are released in Hillsborough County, she said, while Coos County bears the brunt of toxins associated with neurological problems. But most of those came from the pulp mill in Berlin, which is no longer running.

The report comes as the Bush administration moves ahead with plans to exempt some companies from having to report small releases of toxic pollutants.

To ease what it calls the “regulatory burden” on companies, the administration plans to require reporting only by companies that release more than 5,000 pounds of the worst toxic pollutants.

The current threshold is 500 pounds.

Critics of the change say it will reduce the public’s ability to learn about possible health risks in their neighborhoods.

“We should use less toxic chemicals, and we should less release into the environment, but as an important first step, the public needs full information about what chemicals are being released, where they’re being released and in what amounts they’re being released,” Robnett said.

Joining Robnett was Palmer Jones, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Medical Society, which represents about 2,500 doctors across the state. The amount of toxins ingested through the air may not seem like much, he said, but they build up in the body over time.

“It’s time that we do something,” he said, listing the various health problems linked to the chemicals. “These are all real, and they aren’t going to go away. We have a limited existence on our planet and if we don’t address these issues in a forthright way, your children and grandchildren may not be able to enjoy what we have.”