A screening method for assessing cumulative impacts.

The California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) Environmental Justice Action Plan calls for guidelines for evaluating "cumulative impacts." As a first step toward such guidelines, a screening methodology for assessing cumulative impacts in communities was developed. The method, presented here, is based on the working definition of cumulative impacts adopted by Cal/EPA: "Cumulative impacts means exposures, public health or environmental effects from the combined emissions and discharges in a geographic area, including environmental pollution from all sources, whether single or multi-media, routinely, accidentally, or otherwise released.