The Environmental Protection Agency's Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screening Tool (C-FERST) and its potential use for environmental justice efforts.

Objectives. Our primary objective was to provide higher quality, more accessible science to address challenges of characterizing local-scale exposures and risks for enhanced community-based assessments and environmental decision-making.Methods. After identifying community needs, priority environmental issues, and current tools, we designed and populated the Community-Focused Exposure and Risk Screening Tool (C-FERST) in collaboration with stakeholders, following a set of defined principles, and considered it in the context of environmental justice.Results. C-FERST is a geographic information system and resource access Web tool under development for supporting multimedia community assessments. Community-level exposure and risk research is being conducted to address specific local issues through case studies.Conclusions. C-FERST can be applied to support environmental justice efforts. It incorporates research to develop community-level data and modeled estimates for priority environmental issues, and other ...