Environmental Justice is the right to safe, healthy, productive, and sustainable environments for all persons, no exceptions. The environment includes the natural and man-made features of nearby areas, as well as the economic conditions and governmental systems that people experience.

Environmental Justice Harms are persisting or recurring features of environments that violate this right, such as chronic exposure or vulnerability to something that negatively impacts communities or a lack of access to something communities need. These harms interfere with the ability of communities to thrive. Their successful mitigation requires that individual and group identities and needs are respected and considered in the decision-making process.

To make community-level data about environmental justice (EJ) harms more accessible. We believe that data about the prevalence of these harms helps identify problems and empowers community efforts to advocate for much-needed resources and infrastructure to mitigate them.

People all over the United States can use this resource, though for our initial launch we only providle state/county level content for users in the Southeast, corresponding to the states in EPA Region 4 (see map at right). We will expand region, state, and county specific content for to the rest of the US in the future.

This platform is organized around twenty-nine dimensions of EJ Harms that communities may experience. We provide information on each harm’s page to help users easily gather data on their community’s level of exposure to that harm.

For most harms, we link to data sources created by other organizations, providing instructions for use, and advice on which data points may be most useful to focus on. For harms that do not have existing data sources, we suggest ways users can engage in citizen science and gather data in their communities. We also provide contact lists by state of organizations from which users can request more data or with whom collaboration may be possible. Finally, in some cases we suggest steps that can be taken to address the harm.

The website allows you to investigate as many or as few harms as you wish, though we encourage you to build a comprehensive picture of the issues facing your community and to consider how they interact. The most effective solutions will likely be built from this approach.

Concerned citizens

Neighborhood groups

Community-based organizations

Nonprofits

Government staff

Researchers/academics