This final report of the New Jersey Comparative Risk Project summarizes a four-year effort to evaluate the impacts of New Jersey’s environmental problems. The magnitude of these impacts is compared using a new, unique ranking system that will be an invaluable reference for prioritizing future environmental management efforts.

Funded by the DEP and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the report was overseen by a 19-member independent panel. Seventy-three experts analyzed and ranked 88 chemical, physical and biological factors (“stressors”) according to their relative impacts on human health, ecological quality and socioeconomic conditions. The report provides 178 detailed analyses of stressors from acid precipitation and benzene to West Nile Virus and zinc. Its findings indicate that the conversion of undeveloped land poses the top ecological and socioeconomic risk to New Jersey’s environment and people. Indoor pollution and outdoor air pollution pose major health and socioeconomic risks, and invasive species pose serious ecological threats to several New Jersey ecosystems.

DEP News Release - DEP Releases Study that Ranks Top Risks to New Jersey’s Environment and Human Health: Land Use Change Poses State’s Highest Environmental Threat

Report Cover Letter

(The links below are Adobe Acrobat PDF files. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat reader, please click here.)

The NJCRP report is available in its entirety by clicking on the link below.
The report is a total of 213 pages with a file size of 1.25MB.
NJCRP Report

To facilitate online viewing, the NJCRP final report has been divided into the following subsections:

Executive Summary includes overall rankings for three kinds of impacts.

Rankings - 88 environmental stressors listed by their relative negative impacts on human health, ecological quality, and socioeconomic conditions. This section also includes the NJCRP origins, mission, and process.

Detailed Analyses - The Analyses section provides a more detailed discussion of the process of the NJCRP, particularly for the expert workgroups that separately analyzed health, ecological and socioeconomic impacts; and presents alternative perspectives for ranking environmental issues.

Summaries – One-page summaries of each environmental issue including a definition, overall ranking, potential impact, and present efforts to address the issue.

Appendices – This section includes

• NJCRP Participants
• Standard Analysis Templates
• Human Health Analyses
• Ecological Health Analyses
  • Acid Precipitation – Inadvertent Animal Mortality
  • Increase in Impervious Surface – Phosphorus
  • Phthalates – Zinc
• Socioeconomic Analyses
  • 1,3-Butadiene – Land Use Change
  • Lead – Zinc
• Analyses of issues not included in the overall rankings.