The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has a set of data models that it uses to identify which industrial companies and facilities they should keep an eye on when it comes to the release of toxic chemicals into the environment and the maintenance of public health. These models are called Risk-Screening Environmental Indicators, or (RSEI). One of these models, the RSEI Cancer Score, is focused on monitoring the release of known carcinogens, or cancer-causing toxic chemicals.
RSEI Cancer Scores are calculated to compare the relative human risk of industrial facilities that produce and release cancer-causing chemicals in a geographic area. Higher scores can indicate a higher potential for an above average cancer risk for the area that surrounds a particular facility. It is a risk assessment calculation however, and does not produce a risk estimate, such as the number of actual excess cancer cases in an area. A number of weighted factors go into the score such as the toxicity levels of chemicals released, the industrial sector a facility belongs to, and the population of an area.
Read more about RSEI Scores and explore other data available online here
For this visualization project, I downloaded EPA's most recent collection of RSEI Cancer Scores (2022). I condensed my enormous dataset using a shortlist of 2,233 facilities identified by Propublica as significant drivers of cancer risk in their recent data analysis and news investigation
This project utilizes D3.js, Leaflet.js, and other libraries for data visualization. Feel free to interact with the visualizations to understand a little more about the environmental and public health risks posed by American industry.
Which facilities are given the hightest risk score for cancer-causing toxins? And which states are these sites in? Hover your mouse over each bar to see details about the site including the parent company and the industry it belongs to.
I've created two versions of this chart to show a big-picture view of the companies and industries identified with the highest risk sites. Use the buttons below to toggle between a company-based hierarchy vs an industry-based hierarchy.
Click on any large bubble to see the details of the smaller bubbles within them. Each (white) bubble represents a facility and its size is determined by its RSEI Cancer Score. The larger the bubble, the higher the score.
Note: To avoid clutter, the company view shows the 100 companies with the highest average RSEI Cancer Scores.