The environmental health hazard exposure index summarizes potential exposure to harmful toxins at a neighborhood level. Potential health hazards exposure is a linear combination of standardized EPA estimates of air quality carcinogenic (c), respiratory (r) and neurological (n) hazards with i indexing census tracts. Where means and standard errors are estimated over the national distribution. Interpretation Values are inverted and then percentile ranked nationally. Values range from 0 to 100. The higher the index value, the less exposure to toxins harmful to human health. Therefore, the higher the value, the better the environmental quality of a neighborhood, where a neighborhood is a census block-group. Data Source: National Air Toxics Assessment (NATA) data, 2005. Data Current As Of: 6/15/2015. This layer is intended for researchers, students, policy makers, and the general public for reference and mapping purposes, and may be used for basic applications such as viewing, querying, and map output production. This layer will provide a basemap for layers related to socio-political analysis, statistical enumeration and analysis, or to support graphical overlays and analysis with other spatial data. More advanced user applications may focus on demographics, urban and rural land use planning, socio-economic analysis and related areas (including defining boundaries, managing assets and facilities, integrating attribute databases with geographic features, spatial analysis, and presentation output.)
