Abstract
Currently, existing environmental justice designations in four New England states are primarily based on income, race, and language isolation criteria, overlooking the cumulative interactions among environmental, social, housing, health, and climate-related stressors. This underscores a clear need for a comprehensive regional framework that more accurately identifies communities experiencing disproportionate environmental burdens and accounts for pollution exposure, housing insecurity, health outcomes, and climate-related risks. This study describes how environmental, health, housing, and climate burdens are distributed across New England and identifies underlying patterns using spatial mapping, cumulative analysis, Spearman correlations, and principal component analysis. Data from Environmental Protection Agency Environmental Justice Screen (EPA EJScreen), Centre for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC PLACES), Federal Emergency Management Agency's National Risk Index (FEMA), and the American Community Survey (ACS) were combined into a 40-variable dataset using national percentiles for all six states. The overarching goal of the study is to assess whether each state’s current EJ framework captures the communities most in need of interventions and assistance. State-by-state descriptive patterns varied significantly: Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island showed prevalence of environmental burdens such as traffic proximity, proximity to hazardous waste sites, and Superfund sites, while Maine and Vermont exhibited higher percentiles of health-related burdens, disability, and elderly population. PCA revealed six principal components, highlighting groups of variables that exhibited strong correlations and shared underlying patterns. The first three components accounted for most of the explained variance. The first component combined housing insecurity, utility threats, transportation barriers, and health burden; the second captured pollution exposure from traffic, hazardous waste sites, and diesel particulate matter; the third component captured the renter cost burdens. Climate hazard risk showed little association with the other components. When examining the differences between the states, Maine and Vermont showed pollution and chronic disease affecting different communities; aside from Rhode Island having similarities with Massachusetts and Connecticut, Rhode Island’s component four loaded significantly on health burdens; New Hampshire showed a distinct pattern combining renter racial concentration, linguistic isolation, and pollution proximity not seen elsewhere. A uniform EJ framework was investigated to capture disproportionate burdens in the New England states through four cumulative screening scenarios. The study recommends statespecific thresholds within a standardized regional framework that maintains consistency across New England while accounting for each state's unique environmental and socioeconomic characteristics and incorporating housing, state-health criteria, and climate composite. Keywords: environmental justice, cumulative impact assessment, principal component analysis, New England, census block group, housing insecurity, pollution proximity, climate risk, health burden.