Ch. 1
Natural substances or human-made chemicals that may have toxic effects on humans, animals, plants, or the environment and require regulation.
Toxicants
A term that refers to how our long-held operating systems consistently disadvantage people of color and reinforce a racial hierarchy.
White supremacy
When impervious surfaces and other infrastructure (e.g.,buildings) absorb and reemit solar energy, leading to higher temperatures.
Urban heat island effect
Valuing of diverse forms and sources of knowledge—including the experiences of those most impacted by environmental issues.
Epistemic justice
Mapping approach that provides opportunities to incorporate local knowledge, offer contextual information to spatial data, and allows for users to interact with or use data for grassroots, community-led initiatives to leverage requests for changes.
Participatory GIS (PGIS)
When many disciplines work together with a goal of improving health by recognizing the interconnectedness of people, animals, plants, and the environment
One Health
Neighborhoods located immediately adjacent to industrial facilities, such as petrochemical plants, refineries, or manufacturing hubs, separated only by a fence.
Fenceline communities
The principle that the benefits reaped from activities that cause climate change and the burdens of climate change impacts should be distributed fairly.
Climate justice
Who controls data, which can be affected by laws in the country where the study occurs
Any physical, chemical, radiological, or biological entity that can induce an adverse effect in humans or ecosystems.
Stressor
Any environmentally-related policy, practice, or directive that differentially affects or disadvantages individuals, groups, or communities based on race or color.
Environmental racism
An approach that seeks to identify and influence the health and equity impacts of policy decisions, to enhance health benefits, and to avoid harm.
Health in all policies
The goal of recognizing and addressing the unequal burdens made worse by climate change, while ensuring that all people share the benefits of climate protection efforts.
Climate equity
Community involvement in determining the issue addressed through the research, the design and process of research, and action to effect change as a part of the research process.
Community-based participatory research
Estimates or measures the magnitude, frequency, and duration of exposure to a hazard.
Exposure assessment
The factors that shape the environments where we are born, live, learn, work, play, worship, and age and how we experience them.
Social Determinants of Health
Describes multiple chemical and nonchemical environmental stressors on health
Cumulative impacts
Strategies reduce the extraction and burning of fossil fuels or the release of greenhouse gasses and, as such, offer opportunities to protect health and the environment.
Climate mitigation
When two or more ills (e.g., racism, COVID-19, police brutality, climate change) affect each other and worsen impacts.
Syndemic
The use of the factual base to define the health effects of exposure of individuals or populations to hazardous materials and situations.
Risk assessment
The totality of our external exposures, including chemical, biological, and psychosocial, and other cumulative and interactive factors.
Exposome
The complex interplay of economic, political, cultural, and social forces.
Structural determinants of health
The adjustment in natural or human systems to a new or changing environment that exploits beneficial opportunities or moderates negative effects.
Climate adaptation
Research approach defined by community ownership and management at each stage of the research process, including community members or staff at a community-based organization acting in the roles of principal investigator(s) and project manager(s).
Community-owned and -managed research (COMR)
Maps not meant to locate anything with high precision, but are used to display the distribution of one or more specific variables, such as average household income, population density, or the incidence of a disease, as aggregated by a geographic unit, such as country, state, county, census tract, or ZIP code.
Thematic maps