“Cumulative Impacts”
Definitions
Cumulative impacts refer to the total burden of multiple environmental, health, and social stressors and their effects on health, well-being, and quality of life.
They represent the lived reality of communities overburdened with high levels of multiple environmental stressors, such as pollution or extreme weather associated with climate change, health stressors such as asthma or cardiovascular disease, and social stressors such as lack of health care access, food insecurity, or substandard housing…
“Cumulative Impacts refers to the total burden – positive, neutral, or negative – from chemical and non-chemical stressors and their interactions that affect the health, well-being, and quality of life of an individual, community, or population at a given point in time or over a period of time.”
“Cumulative risks and impacts [are defined as]… a matrix of physical, chemical, biological, social, and cultural factors which result in certain communities and sub-populations being more susceptible to environmental toxins, being more exposed to toxins, or having compromised ability to cope with and/or recover from such exposure.”
“The cumulative impact from several projects is the change in the environment which results from the incremental impact of the project when added to other closely related past, present, and reasonably foreseeable probable future projects. Cumulative impacts can result from individually minor but collectively significant projects taking place over a period of time.”