year is $49.6 million. During the past 2 months, the committee heard presentations and received background materials from EPA officials and scientists describing their overall plans for allocation of most of this budget. A categorized summary of the planned budget for Fiscal 1998, derived by the committee from EPA's materials, is presented in Table 6.1. Of the total EPA budget for particulate-matter research in 1998, approximately 50% is devoted to intramural research, 39% to extramural research; and the remaining 11% to interagency research activities.

The committee reviewed EPA's overall plans in comparison with the committee's source-concentration/indicator-exposure-dose-response framework presented in this report (Figure 3.1 in Chapter 3), and found that of the total available, more than half of EPA's particulate-matter research resources are directed at better understanding health responses, through mechanistic and long-term health-effects research. Nearly one-third of EPA's total particulate-matter research resources appear to be allocated toward efforts to identify the links between sources and ambient particulate-matter concentrations and to improve ambient monitoring. Only 4% of the intramural budget for particulate-matter research in EPA's laboratories is focused on better understanding of the relationship between actual personal exposure and the particulate-matter concentrations measured at outdoor, fixed-site monitors. This is a critical deficiency that requires immediate rectification. And by design, the agency is apparently not planning major research on dose-response questions until the year 2000.

After the committee developed its recommendations for a portfolio of highest-priority particulate-matter research investments (Chapters 4 and 5), it compared its recommended research investment priorities with EPA's current research-funding allocations and plans. The committee finds that all of the questions addressed in EPA's current research plans fit within the overall source-concentration/indicator-exposure-