Environmental justice burden

Where do environmental burdens and vulnerability stack up across Chicago? This map shows EPA EJScreen indicators for each community area — the EJ demographic index plus air quality, traffic, lead, and proximity to hazardous sites. Search your address or click any community area, and switch indicators with the tabs.

Full ranking — all 77 neighborhoods

Rank	Neighborhood	EPA EJScreen national percentile (0–100)
1	Fuller Park	97
2	Riverdale	97
3	West Garfield Park	95
4	East Garfield Park	94
5	West Englewood	94
6	Englewood	93
7	South Deering	93
8	Greater Grand Crossing	92
9	North Lawndale	92
10	Woodlawn	92
11	Chicago Lawn	91
12	Washington Park	91
13	Oakland	90
14	Gage Park	90
15	South Chicago	90
16	South Shore	90
17	Auburn Gresham	89
18	Austin	88
19	Burnside	88
20	West Pullman	88
21	Chatham	87
22	Roseland	87
23	New City	87
24	Brighton Park	87
25	Pullman	86
26	Humboldt Park	86
27	South Lawndale	86
28	Avalon Park	85
29	Armour Square	85
30	Grand Boulevard	85
31	East Side	84
32	Washington Heights	83
33	Archer Heights	83
34	Calumet Heights	83
35	Hermosa	82
36	West Lawn	81
37	Ashburn	81
38	Douglas	81
39	Belmont Cragin	81
40	McKinley Park	81
41	Lower West Side	79
42	West Elsdon	78
43	Hegewisch	78
44	Kenwood	74
45	Bridgeport	70
46	Rogers Park	68
47	Albany Park	67
48	Morgan Park	67
49	Montclare	67
50	West Ridge	66
51	Near West Side	65
52	Avondale	64
53	North Park	63
54	Portage Park	57
55	Irving Park	55
56	Hyde Park	54
57	Garfield Ridge	52
58	Uptown	50
59	Edgewater	49
60	Near South Side	49
61	Dunning	49
62	Clearing	48
63	Logan Square	48
64	Jefferson Park	47
65	Loop	45
66	West Town	41
67	Beverly	39
68	Lincoln Square	37
69	Near North Side	33
70	Norwood Park	32
71	North Center	28
72	Lake View	25
73	Lincoln Park	25
74	Edison Park	21
75	Mount Greenwood	19
76	Forest Glen	19
77	O'Hare	12

How to read this map

EPA EJScreen scores every census block group on environmental and demographic indicators. Each value here is a national percentile (0–100): a score of 90 means the area faces a heavier burden than 90% of the country. We show each community area as the area-weighted average of the block groups it covers, so a warmer color means a higher burden. The drawer reports how many block groups were averaged.

The EJ demographic index combines low-income and people-of-color shares — EPA’s measure of who is most affected. The environmental tabs (PM2.5, ozone, diesel, lead, traffic, and proximity to Superfund, chemical-accident, hazardous-waste, wastewater, and underground-storage sites) are the burdens themselves. Chicago sits high on the national scale across most of them — the story is where the heaviest burdens concentrate, from the industrial belts of the West and South Sides to the Calumet corridor on the Southeast Side.

Source: EPA EJScreen block-group indicators (v2.32, 2024 release), intersected with Census TIGER/Line block-group boundaries for Cook County. Air-toxics cancer and respiratory indices are omitted where EPA suppresses their national percentile. See methodology for details.