The EJScreen Tool: Social Explorer Provides Access to Archived Environmental Justice Data

The EJScreen tool is an interactive mapping and reporting platform designed to measure environmental risk at state, local, and neighborhood levels. First developed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and debuted in 2015, the EJScreen tool gave researchers, policymakers, planners, and advocates access to data that reflects the EPA's definition of environmental justice: "the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies."

Less than a month after taking office, the Trump administration began removing large amounts of government data from the public domain. The EJScreen tool was among the casualties, shut down by the White House in March 2025.

Aware of the harm this could cause, Social Explorer and a consortium of data-oriented organizations preemptively copied the EPA's data to its website, where it remains available for public use. The Social Explorer version of EJScreen data contains data from 2016–24, allowing users to visualize environmental hazards across communities and gauge trends based on environmental variables and demographic composition.

What Does the EJScreen Tool Include?

The EJScreen dataset organizes its data into 11 categories, each containing multiple variables:

• Total Population
• Land Area (sq. miles)
• Demographics
• Vulnerable Populations
• Education and Age
• Health and Life Expectancy
• Housing and Lead
• Air Quality
• Proximity and Traffic
• Drinking Water and Other Environmental
• Composite Indices

For example, the Housing and Lead category includes housing age and lead paint presence, while the Air Quality section tracks particulate matter levels. This breadth makes the EJScreen tool one of the most comprehensive environmental data resources available to the public.

Who Can Use the EJScreen Data?

Anyone with a Social Explorer account can access EJScreen data for reporting and visualization. However, EJScreen data is especially valuable for three groups:

1. State and local policymakers use it for permitting decisions, program design, and targeting grant funding to communities most in need.
2. Researchers rely on EJScreen data to identify potential environmental trouble spots – near refineries or highways, for instance – track hazard impacts over time, and correlate environmental data with enforcement records.
3. Planners apply EJScreen data to guide infrastructure investment decisions, assess potential business locations, and model how operations affect climate at the neighborhood level.

10 Ways to Use EJScreen Data

EJScreen data can be applied across a wide range of professional and civic contexts. Here are ten of the most impactful uses:

1. Identifying overburdened communities – Find Census tracts where pollution intersects with high poverty rates, concentrations of people of color or non-native English speakers, or low educational attainment.
2. Targeting outreach and engagement – Develop materials for community engagement or public officials who can influence the course of projects or regulations.
3. Permitting and environmental review support – Use the EJScreen tool in NEPA reviews to identify vulnerable communities that could be affected by proposed infrastructure such as highways or pipelines.
4. Grant eligibility and program design – Justify funding or technical assistance to ensure disadvantaged communities receive the help they need.
5. Policy analysis and prioritization – Compare neighborhoods to determine where standards should be tightened, mitigation pursued, or enforcement boosted.
6. Journalism and investigative reporting – Identify patterns where environmental justice is lacking and add quantitative rigor to local reporting.
7. Enforcement targeting and compliance oversight – Pinpoint communities where inspections and enforcement should be enhanced due to disproportionate pollution burdens.
8. Community advocacy and organizing – Bring EJScreen maps and reports to public meetings, hearings, or lobbying efforts to demonstrate how pollution is affecting disadvantaged communities.
9. Academic research and spatial analysis – Use EJScreen indicators in studies on health disparities, climate vulnerability, and land-use planning.
10. Cross-tool comparison and validation – Pair the EJScreen tool with resources like the CDC's Social Vulnerability Index to sharpen analysis and test research hypotheses.

Interpreting EJScreen Data: Geography and Demographics

Understanding how the EJScreen tool structures its data is essential to using it accurately.

Geography

Social Explorer's version of the EJScreen tool presents data at the Census tract level. There are roughly 84,400 Census tracts in the United States, each generally comprising between 1,200 and 8,000 people. Census tract boundaries occasionally approximate neighborhood or town boundaries, making them a practical unit of analysis. While the original EPA EJScreen tool included block group-level data, Social Explorer chose to work with Census tracts because they are more straightforward to interpret without the need to aggregate smaller geographies.

Demographics

EJScreen data draws heavily from the American Community Survey (ACS), the gold standard for U.S. survey data. However, because the ACS is a survey, it carries margins of error – and those margins grow as population size decreases. Results that appear to be outliers at the Census tract level deserve extra scrutiny, though this does not mean the data is inaccurate.

Interpreting EJScreen Tool Data: Percentiles Explained

The EJScreen tool uses percentiles to compare areas, not to rank them in absolute terms. A high percentile does not necessarily mean an area has more pollution – it means it is worse off relative to other areas on a national basis. A 95th percentile Census tract is not three times as polluted as a 32nd percentile tract; it is simply further along the spectrum of relative risk.

Where actual scores are available, direct comparison is more informative. For example, in Louisiana's Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators data from 2024, Census Tract 9702.02 in Cameron Parish had an RSEI Air score of 15,160.99, while neighboring Census Tract 34 in Calcasieu Parish scored 86,959.75 – meaning the Calcasieu Parish tract carries roughly six times the potential risk.

Limitations of the EJScreen Tool

The EJScreen tool is a powerful starting point, but it is not a final answer. Keep these limitations in mind:

• Tribal lands are not required to report all data due to sovereignty considerations, meaning hazards across vast areas of the West may be underrepresented.
• Rural exposure to environmental hazards is likely underestimated.
• Indoor air quality cannot be measured.
• Legacy contamination and unregulated pollutants fall outside the tool's scope.
• Some key indicators – such as local drinking water quality – are only available for certain geographies.
• Records are incomplete for all states, including data on voluntary cleanup sites and state Superfund sites.

Best Practices for Using EJScreen Tool Data

To ensure your use of the EJScreen tool is accurate and well-communicated, follow these best practices:

• Always cite the vintage (year) of the data you are using.
• Exercise caution when comparing across geographies with very different population densities.
• Never discount lived experience – qualitative input from people within a geographic area adds critical context.
• Be transparent about uncertainty and the boundaries of what the data can tell you.

When in doubt about a variable's definition, consult available resources such as the EPA EJSCREEN glossary.

Access EJScreen Tool Data with Social Explorer

The removal of the EPA's EJScreen tool from the public domain makes Social Explorer's archived version more important than ever. Whether you're a researcher, planner, policymaker, journalist, or community advocate, this data can help you identify environmental inequities and make the case for meaningful change.

Ready to explore EJScreen data for yourself? Sign up for a free trial of Social Explorer and get immediate access to EJScreen data from 2016–24, alongside powerful mapping and reporting tools designed to turn complex demographic, economic, and environmental data into clear, actionable insights.