October 16, 2024“Community Guide to Cumulative Impacts” breaks down the science and organizing needed for stronger pollution-prevention policies at the state and local level
Press Release
Media Contact
Deidre Nelms; Communications Director; Coming Clean; dnelms@comingcleaninc.org, (802) 251-0203 ext. 711.
Lana Cohen; Communications Officer ; Union of Concerned Scientists; lcohen@ucsusa.org, (617) 334-7343.
On October 16, 2024, Coming Clean and the Union of Concerned Scientists published The Community Guide to Cumulative Impacts, a resource to drive policy changes at the state and local level to protect overburdened communities from cumulative chemical and pollution harms. The Guide is available in English and Spanish.
The Guide was co-developed with over eight local organizations across the country, including Los Jardines Institute, Clean + Healthy, and COPAL (Communidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina), that have long advocated for holistic policies that can reduce stressors on community health. The Guide defines cumulative impacts as “the combined chemical and non-chemical stressors on a community’s health, well-being, and quality of life.” It compares various metrics and mapping tools that can help environmental justice communities show policymakers that their community is experiencing multiple, reinforcing health stressors, such as proximity to many highly polluting facilities releasing multiple chemicals, lack of access to affordable healthcare and housing, and language barriers.
The Guide then highlights local and state cumulative impacts policies that have been signed into law at the urging of community advocates and offers guidance for community organizers advocating for similar policies. Six states, including Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Minnesota, have enacted laws that provide state regulators with enhanced authority to either condition or deny air permits for facilities shown to contribute to cumulative impacts. Some of these laws apply statewide.Others apply exclusively to environmental justice areas.
The federal government also has recognized the need to address cumulative impacts in environmental and health policy. In 2023, President Biden signed an Executive Order committing to a “government-wide approach to environmental justice,” which directed all agencies to take steps to identify and address “cumulative impacts of environmental and other burdens on communities with environmental justice concerns.” EPA Administrator Michael Regan has issued an agency-wide directive to “take steps to better serve historically marginalized communities using cumulative impact assessment.”
But federal progress has been limited. “Unfortunately, the movement of recommendations from research to guidance to integration into regulatory action has been too slow to provide relief for frontline communities,” according to the Guide.
Despite discussions at EPA for over 20 years and a deeper focus during the Biden Administration, the rhetoric is not matched by action. Communities are taking state and local policy into their own hands, but federal action is needed,” said Kathy Curtis, co-author of the Guide and Coming Clean network team leader.
“Cumulative impacts research and maps are great resources, but only if they are used strategically to improve the well-being of overburdened communities,” said Kristie Ellickson, Senior Scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists and co-author of the Guide. “This resource was written to help people leverage the existing science and policies to take action and organize for stronger local pollution regulations. We have so much to learn from the work that communities on the ground have already done.”
“Environmental justice advocates might not have always used the language of ‘cumulative impacts’ - but our communities have long organized for policies to address the combined impacts of multiple facilities in our neighborhoods, which are so often neighborhoods of color,” said Richard Moore, Co-Coordinator of Los Jardines Institute. “I hope this Guide helps demystify the language of cumulative impacts. Because if you can’t get the community to see it, touch it, feel it, taste it, smell it as a tangible issue, you are going to have somewhat of a problem organizing around it.”
“When you're just starting, it feels like, ‘Oh my gosh, how am I even going to begin with this or how?’ And this Guide provides that initial support. I think this is such a beautiful Guide put together by many people doing this work throughout the U.S.” said Carolina Ortíz of Comunidades Organizando el Poder y la Acción Latina (COPAL) “And I know that it can change the reality of other people in other states. We need more states to adopt these policies, and I think this is one of those tools that can get us there.”
‘We need public health protections to address cumulative impacts. Instead of focusing on just one polluting industry’s emissions or one smoke stack over a lifetime, cumulative impacts consider the whole picture of combined chemicals and toxins coming from all polluting sources released onto a community,” said Beto Lugo Martinez, Executive Director of RiSE for Environmental Justice. “To achieve environmental justice and improve health we must transform our regulatory system to acknowledge the myriad environmental and socioeconomic stressors that synergistically and disproportionately impact overburdened communities. We designed this Guide to support communities and decision makers to implement cumulative impact framework policies.”
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Coming Clean is a nonprofit environmental health network working to transform the chemical industry so it is no longer a source of harm, and to secure systemic changes that allow a safe chemical and clean energy economy to flourish. Our members are organizations and technical experts — including grassroots activists, community leaders, scientists, health professionals, business leaders, lawyers, and farmworker advocates — committed to principled collaboration to advance a nontoxic, sustainable, and just world for all. Follow us on X, Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook.
The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous, independent science to work to solve our planet’s most pressing problems. Joining with people across the country, we combine technical analysis and effective advocacy to create innovative, practical solutions for a healthy, safe and sustainable future. For more information, go to www.ucsusa.org.