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Elinor W. Fanning,¹ John R. Froines,¹ Mark J. Utell,² Morton Lippmann,³ Gunter Oberdörster², Mark Frampton,² John Godleski,⁴ and Tim V. Larson⁵

¹Center for Environmental and Occupational Health, School of Public Health, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA; ²University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, USA; ³New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA; ⁴Department of Environmental Health, Harvard University School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; ⁵Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

Abstract
Objective: The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency funded five academic centers in 1999 to address the uncertainties in exposure, toxicity, and health effects of airborne particulate matter (PM) identified in the “Research Priorities for Airborne Particulate Matter" of the National Research Council (NRC) . The centers were structured to promote interdisciplinary approaches to address research priorities of the NRC. In this report, we present selected accomplishments from the first 6 years of the PM Centers, with a focus on the advantages afforded by the interdisciplinary, center-based research approach. The review highlights advances in the area of ultrafine particles and traffic-related health effects as well as cardiovascular and respiratory effects, mechanisms, susceptibility, and PM exposure and characterization issues.

Data sources and synthesis: The collective publications of the centers served as the data source. To provide a concise synthesis of overall findings, authors representing each of the five centers identified a limited number of topic areas that serve to illustrate the key accomplishments of the PM Centers program, and a consensus statement was developed.

Conclusions: The PM Centers program has effectively applied interdisciplinary research approaches to advance PM science.

Key words: acute effects, biological mechanisms, chronic effects, criteria pollutants, dosimetry, exposure assessment, morbidity, mortality, particulate matter. Environ Health Perspect 117:167–174 (2009) . doi:10.1289/ehp.11543 available via http://dx.doi.org/ [Online 15 September 2008]

Address correspondence to E. Fanning, UCLA School of Public Health, 650 Charles E. Young Dr. South, Los Angeles, CA 90095 USA. Telephone: (310) 206-1229. Fax: (310) 206-9903. E-mail: efanning@ucla.edu

Progress reports and citations to additional PM Center publications are available on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) Web site at http://es.epa.gov/ncer/science/pm/centers.html

The authors applaud the efforts of all PM Center researchers and the U.S. EPA for continued support of this critical research area. U.S. EPA program officers S. Katz and G. Robarge were invaluable in coordinating the preparation of this manuscript.

This work was supported by U.S. EPA Center grants R827352, R827351, R827355, R827353, and R827354.

The authors declare they have no competing financial interests.

Received 4 April 2008 ; accepted 15 September 2008.

Correction

In the title of the manuscript originally published online, the date range in the title was incorrect. It has been corrected here.