About CalEnviroScreen

What is CalEnviroScreen?

• CalEnviroScreen is a mapping tool that helps identify California communities that are most affected by many sources of pollution, and where people are often especially vulnerable to pollution’s effects.
• CalEnviroScreen uses environmental, health, and socioeconomic information to produce scores for every census tract in the state.
• The scores are mapped so that different communities can be compared. An area with a high score is one that experiences a much higher pollution burden than areas with low scores.
• CalEnviroScreen ranks communities based on data that are available from state and federal government sources.

Click to play the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 training videos or visit our visit our Training Video Page.

What are cumulative impacts?

• “Cumulative impacts” means exposures and public health or environmental effects from all sources of pollution in a geographic area.
• Cumulative impacts also take into account groups of people that are especially sensitive to pollution’s effects, such as young children and people with asthma, and socioeconomic factors, such as poverty, race and ethnicity, and education.
• For CalEPA’s definition of cumulative impacts, see the CalEnviroScreen 3.0 report.

What is Environmental Justice?

• State law defines environmental justice to mean “the fair treatment of people of all races, cultures, and incomes with respect to the development, adoption, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.”
• Environmental justice principles are an important part of CalEPA’s goal to restore, protect and improve the environment, and to ensure the health of people, the environment and the economy.
• CalEPA asked OEHHA to develop CalEnviroScreen to identify communities suffering from cumulative impacts of multiple pollutants and people who are vulnerable to pollution’s effects.
• Visit CalEPA’s Environmental Justice Program page here.