NEJAC RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY

The document outlines a framework for cumulative impact assessments (CIAs) that integrates equity, justice, and public health practices. It argues that the EPA and other government entities should use transparent principles to ensure assessments inform regulatory decisions, such as permit denials or pollution cleanup, while incorporating diverse stressors and community-led trust building.

• Cumulative impact assessments should be grounded in four specific types of equity and justice: distributional justice to reduce disproportionate burdens, restorative justice to create a bias for action against historic harms, substantive equity to address marginalization and unequal access to rights, and procedural equity to ensure inclusive community representation in decisionmaking.
• Due to an expected lack of continued federal guidance, the responsibility for determining criteria and standards for cumulative impact assessments will fall to communities, local governments, and states. These assessments must account for social adversity, existing health conditions, multiple sources, environmental media, and multiple pollutants.
• The NEJAC recommends that cumulative impact assessments be developed as a more robust version of Health Impact Assessments (HIAs), adding a critical 'trust building' phase to the existing HIA structure of initiation, scoping, assessment, and informing decisions.
• To be effective, the assessment phase of a CIA must be comprehensive and include a wide array of factors: intergenerational impacts, combined non-chemical stressors, intrinsic susceptibility (such as genetics, age, and existing disease), external systemic factors, and multiple pathways of exposure.
• Cumulative impact assessments should directly influence regulatory outcomes, including the determination of pollution control limits, the denial of permits, and decisions regarding pollution cleanup.

APA

Gehred, N., & Ellickson, K. (2025). NEJAC RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY. Union of Concerned Scientists. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/NEJAC%20CI%20reccs_theme%204.pdf

Chicago

Gehred, Natalie, and Kristie Ellickson. NEJAC RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY. Union of Concerned Scientists, 2025. https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/NEJAC%20CI%20reccs_theme%204.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |last1=Gehred |first1=Natalie |last2=Ellickson |first2=Kristie |title=NEJAC RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY |publisher=Union of Concerned Scientists |date=February 2025 |url=https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/NEJAC%20CI%20reccs_theme%204.pdf |access-date=23 October 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{gehred2025nejac, author = {Gehred, Natalie and Ellickson, Kristie}, title = {{NEJAC RECOMMENDATIONS SUMMARY}}, institution = {Union of Concerned Scientists}, year = {2025}, month = feb, url = {https://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/files/2025-02/NEJAC%20CI%20reccs_theme%204.pdf}, urldate = {2026-10-23}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }