FIGURE 1
Indicators of the Environmental Justice Index
Module
Domain
Indicator
Data Source
Social Vulnerability
Racial/Ethnic Minority Status Socioeconomic Status
Minority Status
U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS)
Poverty No High School Diploma
Unemployment Housing Tenure Housing Burdened Lower-Income Households Lack of Health Insurance Lack of Broadband Internet Access ≥ 65 Years ≤ 17 Years Individual With a Disability Speaks English “Less Than Well”
Household Characteristics
Housing Type
Group Quarters Mobile Homes
Environmental Burden
Air Pollution
Ozone Particulate Matter 2.5 (PM 2.5 ) Diesel Particulate Matter Air Toxics Cancer Risk
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) Air Quality System and National Air Toxics Assessment U.S. EPA Facility Registry Service U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration Mine Data Retrieval System TomTom MultiNet Enterprise Dataset U.S. Census Bureau ACS U.S. EPA National Walkability Index TomTom MultiNet Enterprise Dataset U.S. EPA Watershed Index Online Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Population Level Analysis and Community Estimates (PLACES)
Potentially Hazardous and Toxic Sites
National Priority List Sites Toxic Release Inventory Sites Treatment, Storage, and Disposal Sites Risk Management Plan Sites
Coal Mines Lead Mines
Built Environment
Lack of Recreational Parks Houses Built Pre-1980 Lack of Walkability
Transportation Infrastructure
High-Volume Roads Railways Airports
Water Pollution Impaired Surface Water
Health Vulnerability
Preexisting Chronic Disease Burden
Asthma* Cancer * High Blood Pressure* Diabetes * Poor Mental Health*
* Health vulnerability measures are marked with asterisks because they are calculated differently than other indicators. While most indicators can have a range of values, the health vulnerability indicators represent only whether a given census tract experiences a high estimated prevalence of disease or not.
Environmental Justice Index Model
able, producing a percentile rank score for each indicator for each census tract. Module scores are calculated a bit dierently, depend- ing on the module. For example, scores for the Social Vulnerability and Environmental
Burden Modules are calculated by summing the percentile rank scores for constituent indicators and then assigning each tract a percentile rank score for that module based on the scores of all constituent indicators.
Each indicator in the EJI is ranked from high- est to lowest vulnerability across all census tracts in the nation for which data are avail-
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September 2023 • Journal of Environmental Health
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