EJScreen

Article summary

EJScreen, the Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, is a free and public online screening and mapping tool that contains environmental and demographic data on different areas of the United States. It is an online GIS (Geographic Information System) tool that uses different environmental indicators and combines them individually with demographic information to display an ecological justice index for which communities contribute most to national disparities and may face higher environmental burdens and social vulnerability. It uses publicly available data from sources such as the American Community Survey (ACS) and National Air Toxics Assessment. The tool provides interactive mapping which helps users visualize data down to the census block group level along with indexes to help generate customer reports and exploring state, county, and city-level and country-level trends. This tool helps identify areas disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards and issues. Another purpose of this tool is to support policy decisions, community advocacy, and research on environmental equity. The EJScreen tool was able to direct new environmental initiatives and projects that could be geared towards improving environmental health without causing further environmental hazards to certain demographics or communities.…

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