Quality Management Program

Abstract

Measuring progress is fundamental to air quality management. 1 As the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has adopted specific mandates for a broad range of stationary and mobile sources, the agency has placed substantial emphasis on periodic assessments of how well these programs have worked. Traditionally, such assessments have focused on trends in emissions and air quality, resulting in periodic trends reports by EPA, as well as by most state and local air quality management programs. In recent years, a number of groups have encouraged, developed, and employed approaches going beyond these metrics to include measures that are more direct indicators of changes in environmental and health effects resulting from air pollution programs (see Figure 1). This article outlines some recent assessments of U.S. air pollution programs and discusses the design of prospective assessments that include measurements of health and environmental effects.