Utilization of the Maryland Environmental Justice Screening Tool: A Bladensburg, Maryland Case Study

Aubree Driver, Crystal Mehdizadeh, Samuel Bara-Garcia, Coline Bodenreider, Jessica Lewis and Sacoby Wilson
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Aubree Driver: Public Health Science Program, University of Maryland, 255 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20740, USA
Crystal Mehdizadeh: Public Health Science Program, University of Maryland, 255 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20740, USA
Samuel Bara-Garcia: Public Health Science Program, University of Maryland, 255 Campus Drive, College Park, MD 20740, USA
Coline Bodenreider: Environmental Science and Technology Department, University of Maryland, 1451 Animal Science Bldg, College Park, MD 20742-2315, USA
Jessica Lewis: Department of Psychology, Swarthmore College, 500 College Ave, Swarthmore, PA 19081, USA
Sacoby Wilson: Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, University of Maryland, 255 Valley Drive, College Park, MD 20742, USA

IJERPH, 2019, vol. 16, issue 3, 1-21

Abstract: Maryland residents’ knowledge of environmental hazards and their health effects is limited, partly due to the absence of tools to map and visualize distribution of risk factors across sociodemographic groups. This study discusses the development of the Maryland EJSCREEN (MD EJSCREEN) tool by the National Center for Smart Growth in partnership with faculty at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. The tool assesses environmental justice risks similarly to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (USEPA) EJSCREEN tool and California’s tool, CalEnviroScreen 3.0. We discuss the architecture and functionality of the tool, indicators of importance, and how it compares to USEPA’s EJSCREEN and CalEnviroScreen. We demonstrate the use of MD EJSCREEN through a case study on Bladensburg, Maryland, a town in Prince George’s County (PG) with several environmental justice concerns including air pollution from traffic and a concrete plant. Comparison reveals that environmental and demographic indicators in MD EJSCREEN most closely resemble those in EPA EJSCREEN, while the scoring is most similar to CalEnviroScreen. Case study results show that Bladensburg has a Prince George’s environmental justice score of 0.99, and that National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) air toxics cancer risk is concentrated in communities of color.

Keywords: EJSCREEN; geographic information systems; environmental justice; CalEnviroScreen; vulnerable populations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

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