EJSCREEN: EPA Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed a new environmental justice (EJ) mapping and screening tool called EJSCREEN. EJSCREEN allows users to access high-resolution environmental and demographic information for locations in the United States, and compare their selected locations to the rest of the state, EPA region, or the nation.

EJSCREEN users choose a geographic area, and the tool then provides demographic and environmental information for that area. All of the EJSCREEN indicators are publicly-available data.

This tool uses provides a number of capabilities including:
• Color coded mapping
• The ability to generate a standard report for a selected area
• Comparisons showing how a selected area compares to the state, EPA region or the nation

One key output from EJSCREEN is a standard printed report that describes a selected location. Sometimes the report might focus on a single Census "block group." A block group is an area defined by the Census Bureau that usually has in the range of 600-3,000 people living in it.

More typically, though, an EJSCREEN report will cover a "buffer" area, an area on the map that includes everyone who lives within a certain distance of a point, line or polygon. A point might be a factory seeking an emissions permit, for example, and the report could focus on the demographics and environmental conditions within approximately 1 mile of that factory.

In EJSCREEN, buffers can be drawn up to 10 miles around a point, line or polygon. For each indicator, the result is a population-weighted average, which equals the block group indicator values averaged over all residents who are estimated to be inside the buffer.

Each EJ index combines demographic indicators with a single environmental indicator. EJSCREEN provides 12 environmental indicators:

  1. National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) air toxics cancer risk
  2. NATA neurological hazard index
  3. NATA respiratory hazard index
  4. NATA diesel PM
  5. Particulate matter
  6. Ozone
  7. Traffic proximity and volume
  8. Lead paint indicator
  9. Proximity to Risk Management Plan (RMP) sites
  10. Proximity to Treatment Storage and Disposal Facilities
  11. Proximity to National Priorities List (NPL) sites
  12. Proximity to major direct water dischargers

There are six demographic indicators for analysis:

  1. Percent Low-Income
  2. Percent Minority
  3. Less than high school education
  4. Linguistic isolation
  5. Individuals under age 5
  6. Individuals over age 64

 If you have any trouble accessing the website link above, please find here an archived page. You may find this has limited use. https://web.archive.org/web/20161229100404/https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen

Publication Date: June 10, 2015

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  • Mapping tool
  • Tool (general)

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