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EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment
What are the trends in the condition of the nation’s air, water, and land? What are the related trends in human health and ecosystem quality? EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment (ROE) presents a set of scientifically sound indicators to help answer 23 such questions that are important to the Agency’s mission to protect the environment and human health.
“EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment is part of an important dialogue on how to improve our ability to assess the nation’s environmental quality and human health, and how we can use that information for better management in achieving measurable environmental results,” said Dr. George Gray, EPA’s assistant administrator for the Office of Research and Development.
The 2008 Report is the culmination of an effort that began in 2001, when EPA embarked on a bold initiative to assemble an extensive set of environmental indicators into a single volume available to scientists and the public. That effort resulted in the release of the Draft Report on the Environment Technical Document in 2003. Since then, EPA has worked with its independent Science Advisory Board, numerous public stakeholders, other government agencies, and the scientific community to update and refine the environmental and health data available in the Report.
Five main chapters, each representing one of EPA’s primary strategic goals, make up the bulk of the Report: Air, Water, Land, Human Exposure and Health, and Ecological Condition. Each chapter, in turn, is organized around a set of questions that EPA believes should be answered with confidence if the Agency is to be adequately informed about important environmental trends. EPA also notes important gaps and limitations that prevent it from fully answering questions.
Environmental Indicators
At the heart of EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment are “indicators” that track important trends in environmental quality and human health. What makes an indicator useful to EPA?
First, the indicator must be based on an actual measurement that draws attention to an important trend. Second, it must meet a set of six criteria that EPA scientists and engineers established to ensure that indicators are both technically sound and relevant to the public:
1) To be useful, the indicator must answer, or help answer, a question in the ROE.
2) The indicator must be objective. It must be developed and presented in an accurate, clear, complete, and unbiased manner.
3) The indicator must be transparent and reproducible.
4) The underlying data must be characterized by sound collection methodologies, data management systems, and quality assurance systems.
5) Data must be available to describe changes or trends, and the latest-available data must be used.
6) The data must be comparable across time and space, and representative of the target population.
One example indicator from the 2008 ROE tracks the percentage each year of community water systems that reported no violations of EPA health-based standards. That indicator shows the percentage of systems reporting no health-based violations rising from 79 percent in 1993, to 92 percent in 2007.
Proposed indicators were reviewed in a public forum to make certain that citizens, including those not trained as scientists, could use the indicators to broaden their understanding of the environmental trends that are important to them. The indicators were also scientifically peer-reviewed to ensure they meet exacting standards for accuracy, representativeness, and reliability.
Next Steps
The ROE is not just a single report. EPA’s 2008 Report on the Environment: Highlights of National Trends, which will be published by EPA’s Office of Environmental Information later in 2008, summarizes highlights of the EPA 2008 ROE without the technical detail. An electronic version of the ROE, the e-ROE, provides online access to both reports, as well as to the data, methodology, references, and sources of additional information behind the indicators.
EPA is committed to releasing periodic updates of the ROE and its indicators so that the latest information and science on environmental conditions and trends is available to the American public. The ROE will continue to be a comprehensive, single-volume snapshot of current environmental conditions and trends. This continuing effort will help the Agency track changes in the environment and human health, guide the evolution of future indicators and monitoring strategies, and inform programs vital to EPA’s mission.
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