Abstract
Regulatory agencies, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) and state authorities like the California Air Resources Board (CARB), have sought to address the concerns of environmental justice (EJ) advocates who argue that chemical-by-chemical and source-specific assessments of potential health risks of environmental hazards do not reflect the multiple environmental and social stressors faced by vulnerable communities. We propose an Environmental Justice Screening Method (EJSM) as a relatively simple, flexible and transparent way to examine the relative rank of cumulative impacts and social vulnerability within metropolitan regions and determine environmental justice areas based on more than simply the demographics of income and race. We specifically organize 23 indicator metrics into three categories: (1) hazard proximity and land use; (2) air pollution exposure and estimated health risk; and (3) social and health vulnerability. For hazard proximity, the EJSM uses GIS analysis to create a base map by intersecting land use data with census block polygons, and calculates hazard proximity measures based on locations within various buffer distances. These proximity metrics are then summarized to the census tract level where they are combined with tract centroid-based estimates of pollution exposure and health risk and socio-economic status (SES) measures. The result is a cumulative impacts (CI) score for ranking neighborhoods within regions that can inform diverse stakeholders seeking to identify local areas that might need targeted regulatory strategies to address environmental justice concerns.
Highlights
Air pollution has long been recognized as a high priority for both environmental health and justice by researchers, government regulators, and community residents [1,2,3,4] In California in particular, there is consistent evidence indicating patterns of both disproportionate exposure to air pollution and associated health risks among minority and lower-income communities [5,6,7,8,9]
The Environmental Justice Screening Method (EJSM) allows a mapping of cumulative impacts using a set of 23 health, environmental and social vulnerability measures organized along three categories: (1) hazard proximity and land use; (2) estimated air pollution exposure and health risk; (3) social and health vulnerability
Hazard Proximity and Land Use Indicators. This category captures the location of stationary emission sources and sensitive land uses based on the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Air Quality and Land Use Handbook which recommends buffer distances to separate residential and other sensitive land uses from potential hazards in order to protect susceptible populations.[25]
Summary
Air pollution has long been recognized as a high priority for both environmental health and justice by researchers, government regulators, and community residents [1,2,3,4] In California in particular, there is consistent evidence indicating patterns of both disproportionate exposure to air pollution and associated health risks among minority and lower-income communities [5,6,7,8,9]. Su and colleagues developed an index to characterize inequities by race/ethnicity and SES in the cumulative impacts of environmental hazards at the regional level, which allows for comparisons at large geographic scales [20] This approach is not conducive to ranking and assessing distributional patterns of CI at more local, neighborhood-level scales within regions, which has been a primary concern for EJ advocates and some regional air quality agencies. We solicited feedback from environmental health and environmental justice advocates regarding appropriate metrics and we previewed preliminary results for their feedback This strategy of soliciting peer review from agency personnel, scientific colleagues and community stakeholders was aimed at ensuring that the final EJSM was methodologically sound and transparent to diverse audiences in the regulatory, policy and advocacy arenas. The multiple audiences required certain trade-offs; in particular, we made several choices to insure that the method would be more understood by community stakeholders as that would encourage their acceptance of the EJSM as a reasonable approach for regulatory guidance
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