Toxins released into the air, water, and soil by New York City industry have risen sharply in recent years, according to new data made public by the federal government.

The dumping, mostly into the air, has been concentrated along the East River waterfront in Queens, home to the city’s three leading industrial polluters: KeySpan Energy Ravenswood Power Station, Astoria Generating Station, and the Charles Poletti Power Project.

In 2005, according to the latest data released by the Environmental Protection Agency, the plants released 334 tons of toxins such as sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and mercury, known to harm the heart and lungs. The plants helped drive a 9.8% increase citywide in industrial pollution, the data show.

” We call it asthma alley,” a Queens assemblyman, Michael Gianaris, said. “It just so happens that you have probably 80% of the city’s electricity being generated in this area. It’s a health crisis for us.”

Toxic releases from the plants, which date back several decades, have more than tripled since 2002, according to the data. The spike, analysts said, has likely resulted from increasing demand for electricity and a heavier reliance on oil rather than cleaner-burning natural gas as prices for the fuels has fluctuated.

Health experts have linked higher than normal rates of asthma and lung disease to the city’s air pollution, most of which is thought to come from traffic and industry.

Mayor Bloomberg yesterday released a report detailing a sharp rise in the city of greenhouse gas emissions such as carbon dioxide and methane, thought to contribute to global warming. The EPA inventory includes company-reported data on releases of more than 650 chemicals and chemical categories deemed dangerous to humans.

An EPA spokesman, Rich Cahill, said New Yorkers should not be worried by the rise in toxic releases, noting that the city’s power plants abide by state regulations. “It’s not like they’re getting away with murder,” he said.

Queens’s spewing smokestacks have long been criticized by local politicians and environmental groups, who have alternately called for dispersing the energy-generating burden throughout the other boroughs and gutting the old facilities to replace them with newer technologies such as combined cycle systems, which produce far less waste.

Plant operators say they have worked aggressively to scale back their emissions in recent years. By far the heaviest polluter, KeySpan, opened a combined cycle system in 2004 — as did the Poletti plant a year later — which they say has helped to reduce their dependence on dirty technologies.

The Poletti plant, run by the New York Power Authority, also recently increased its usage of natural gas, a spokesman, Michael Saltzman, said. The facility ‘s emissions now rank among the lowest in the country when measured in emissions per megawatt of electricity generated, he said. In a 2002 agreement reached with environmental lobbyists and lawmakers, the agency agreed to retire Poletti no later than 2010.

The director of the Particulate Matter Research Center at the New York University School of Medicine, George Thurston, said a shift toward cleaner energy could not come soon enough. “The real question is: Do you think it’s a wise thing to have large fossil fuel power plants right in the midst of where people are living?” Dr. Thurston said. “I think the answer is no.”