Playing It Safe: Assessing Cumulative Impact and Social Vulnerability through an Environmental Justice Screening Method in the South Coast Air Basin, California

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.

Environmental Justice and Regional Political Ecology converge in the other California

“…Environmental justice movements in the San Joaquin Valley, as elsewhere, have long advocated for environmental regulation that recognizes and intervenes in the co-production of environmental and social inequity and its influence on human health (Huang and London 2012b, Krieg and Faber 2004, Sadd et al 2011. To them, SB 375 offered clear benefits.…”

Racial and Income Disparities in Relation to a Proposed Climate Change Vulnerability Screening Method for California

“…We used the Environmental Justice Screening Method (EJSM) developed by Sadd et al (2011) to develop measures of cumulative impacts. This method uses a set of 23 health, environmental, and social indicators organized into three categories: 1) hazard proximity and land use, 2) air pollution exposure and health risk, and 3) social and health vulnerabilities (Table 2).…”

Equity, Growth, and Community: What the Nation Can Learn from America's Metro Areas

“…Many factors contribute to the environmental problems: agriculture-linked industrial processes, automobiles traversing the valley between Northern and Southern California, heavy-duty diesel-fueled trucks transporting agricultural products out of the region, pesticides entering the air after use, and emissions from oil and gas fields. The resulting toxic soup has substantial health and welfare impacts (Alexeeff et al 2012; Huang and London 2012;London, Huang, and Zagofsky 2011;Sadd et al 2011). Indeed, in a statewide analysis of environmental burden and vulnerabilities conducted in 2013 by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, three of the state's five worst zip codes were in Fresno.…”