Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter IV. Continuing Research Progress (2004) / Chapter Skim
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Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter: IV. Continuing Research Progress
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following directions from Congress in EPA's fiscal year 1998 appropriations report. The congressional request for this study arose from the need to reduce uncertainties in the scientific evidence considered by EPA in reaching the July 1997 decision to establish new National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS)
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Research Topic 1. Outdoor Measures Versus Actual Human Exposures Substantial progress has been made in addressing topic 1, in part because of leadership by EPA in this area.
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Research Topic 3. Characterization of Emission Sources What are the size distribution, chemical composition, and mass emission rates of particulate matter emitted from the collection of primary-particle sources in the United States, and what are the emissions of reactive gases that lead to secondary formation through atmospheric chemical reactions?
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Characterizing PM emission sources requires accurate measurements of mass emission rates, composition, and size distributions from a representative sample of an individual source type. In addition, accurate emission rates of reactive precursor gases, such as sulfur dioxide, are needed.
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Research Topic 4. Air Quality Model Development and Testing EPA's ultimate goal should be to have integrated, flexible, and welltested aerosol models available for development of emission-control strategies for ambient PM management.
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EPA leadership is needed for a coordinated effort to document and compare models and to identifycapabilitiesandlimitationsofmodelsfordecisionmakingpurposes. Research Topic 5.
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Given the complexity of the hypotheses to be tested, large data sets with rich detail on particle characteristics are needed to reduce uncertainties related to topic 5. Also, the sustained research efforts to obtain air quality monitoring data to estimate exposures for study participants and communities for epidemiological studies are only now coming into place.
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Combined Effects of Particulate Matter and Gaseous Pollutants This research topic addresses the extent to which the effects of PM on health are independent of coinciding effects of other pollutants and the possibility that PM effects vary with concentrations of other pollutants. Research is complicated by the possibility that modification of the effects of PM by other pollutants could vary among health outcomes.
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Susceptible Subpopulations Research on susceptible populations is needed to ensure that all populations are protected against risks from PM, including those groups who might be most susceptible. There have been several new findings relevant to susceptible subpopulations.
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It is becoming more evident from clinical and toxicological studies that ambient fine PM induces respiratory and cardiovascular events that in susceptible, compromised people can explain the morbidity and mortality observed in epidemiological studies. Research has documented that components of hypothesized mechanistic sequencesdoactually takeplace,supplyingabiologicalbasisforexplaining some effects of PM observed in susceptible subpopulations.
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As the focus shifts to findings from epidemiological studies on chronic health effects, a similar shift will be required of the mechanistic studies. At present, it is unclear how the mechanisms characterized in the acute health-effects studies relate to the mechanisms underlying chronic health effects.
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LOOKING ACROSS THE RESEARCH TOPICS As the context for PM research has evolved, five cross-cutting issues have emerged. An Increasing Number of Adverse Health Outcomes Associated with PM and the Related Susceptible Subpopulations Research results under the topics of outdoor measures versus actual human exposures, dosimetry, combined effects of PM and gaseous pollutants, susceptible subpopulations, and mechanisms of injury indicate a broadening scope of health concerns since the committee's 1998 report.
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. Information needed to relate particle characteristics to their potential health risk remains largely incomplete, and the committee views this as a critical gap.
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Research findings on the combined effects of particles and gaseous copollutants, susceptible populations, mechanisms of injury, and human exposures have implications that extend beyond PM. The finding of interactions between PM and the other five criteria pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act could provide a rationale for more integrated standards reflecting realistic atmospheric mixture exposures to populations at risk and reflecting the potential for overall mixture toxicity.
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Although somepositive steps have been taken by EPA, rapidly approaching SIP deadlines require faster progress to ensure that these plans are based on the best available information. Research to improve emission inventories and air quality models will also support more targeted emission-control strategies as progress is made in characterizing hazardous PM components.
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There appears to be a tendency to view model development as a research activity that can be decoupled from the regulatory support functions of ambient monitoring and emissions tracking. However,emissions,ambientconcentrations,andsource-receptor relationships are closely interrelated in certain situations (as when a known source dominates ambient loadings)
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Enhancing Air Quality Monitoring for Research Meeting the key PM research priorities will require a shift in the current air monitoring paradigm, from primarily assessing compliance with the NAAQS toward serving multiple purposes, such as air quality forecasting, episode alerts, exposure characterization in populations at high risk, health studies, atmospheric process studies, evaluating emission-source zones of influence, and evaluating long-term effectiveness of control strategies. This shift implies less use of federal reference methods at urban locations and greater use of in situ continuous monitors and compoundspecificintegratedsamplesatlocationsrepresentingbackground,boundary, transport corridor, regional, urban, and neighborhood spatial distributions.
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From a Particulate Matter Research Program to a Multipollutant Research Program Another challengetocompletingthe committee's research agenda lies in the scientifically artificial separation of research on PM from research on air pollution generally. This separation follows the regulatory approach of setting ambient standards for six individual criteria pollutants and corresponding emission standards on precursors without adequate recognition of
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It called for interdisciplinary research and proposed the PM research centers as one mechanism for fostering interdisciplinary collaboration. Although greater cross-disciplinary integration has occurred in some PM research topics, to a large extent the coordination of toxicological, epidemiological, exposure, and atmospheric research has received more discussion than actual implementation to date.
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· Redoubled efforts of appropriate professional societies to hold joint workshops and meetings and to publish proceedings. MANAGING SCIENCE TO ADDRESS THE KEY REMAINING QUESTIONS Progress to date on several of the committee's priority research topics is encouraging and demonstrates that key uncertainties can be quickly addressed with targeted research initiatives, as in the example of research on outdoor measures of airborne PM versus actual human exposure (research topic 1)
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A failure to invest in developing greater understanding of the effects of PM and air pollution, in general, on health would result in not taking full advantage of the substantial research investment to date and in limiting the nation's ability to make evidence-based health policy and air quality regulatory choices in the future. Alternatively, continued enhancement of the air pollution and health research effort will undoubtedly yield substantial benefits for years to come.
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