All residents of the State of New Jersey have a right to live, learn, work, and recreate in a clean and healthy environment. Environmental justice requires fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, in the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. This goal can only be achieved when everyone enjoys the same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards and has equal access to the decision-making processes in the places they live, learn, and work, and recreate.Historically, New Jersey’s low-income communities and communities of color historically have been subjected to a disproportionately high number of environmental and public health stressors—including mobile sources of pollution, and numerous industrial, commercial, and governmental stationary sources of pollution. Further compounding this inequity, New Jersey’s overburdened communities (OBCs) often lack important environmental benefits, such as quality green and open spaces, sufficient tree canopy, or adequate stormwater management.

This dataset provides information on Environmental and Public Health Stressors for each block group in New Jersey to help implement the New Jersey Environmental Justice Law codified at N.J.S.A. 13:1D-157 et seq (EJ Law). Under the EJ Law “Environmental or public health stressors” means sources of environmental pollution, including, but not limited to, concentrated areas of air pollution, mobile sources of air pollution, contaminated sites, transfer stations or other solid waste facilities, recycling facilities, scrap yards, and point-sources of water pollution including, but not limited to, water pollution from facilities or combined sewer overflows; or conditions that may cause potential public health impacts, including, but not limited to, asthma, cancer, elevated blood lead levels, cardiovascular disease, and developmental problems in the overburdened community (OBC). The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (Department) has developed data for 26 individual stressors within these categories and a Combined Stressor Total, which is the sum of adverse stressors in each block group.