investigated to reduce uncertainty, has scientific concern about the possibility of unrecognized adverse health effects of the use of electric power increased or diminished?" Answers are being offered as a result of EMF-RAPID. However, given the shortened time available (4 yr instead of 5 yr), the less-than-requested funding support ($41 million instead of $65 million), and the use of grants rather than contracts for the biology program, it is not surprising that EMF-RAPID was unable to provide a more definitive answer.

According to NIEHS, EMF-RAPID funded 61 biologic research projects (appendix A), providing a total of $25,553,000 in direct cost support. Funding began in FY 1994 with $4,743,000, peaked in FY 1997 with $7,101,000, and ended in FY 1998 with $2,239,000. The average grant was $419,000; the smallest was $5,000 (supplementing other funding), and the largest was $1,837,000; these three figures are direct-cost totals. Seven investigators each received two grants, and a total of 54 investigators were funded. Twenty-nine projects (48%) began with FY 1994 money, 6 (10%) with FY 1995 money, 3 (5%) began with FY 1996 money, and 20 (33%) began with FY 1997 money.

EMF-RAPID also funded 12 engineering projects; 11 final reports arrived in time for the EPACT Committee to review. Support for these 12 projects totaled about $2,670,000 (appendix B). The committee assumes that because these projects were funded by contracts, overhead costs are included in that amount.

EMF-RAPID committed $3,350,000 to biologically-oriented non-research activities (appendix C). A small contract provided a database of MF publications. NIEHS reports spending a total of $718,000 for program administration; this is a small percentage (1.7 %) of the total EMF-RAPID effort. Three-fourths of the funding in this class of activities—$2,480,000—was for the entire process of information gathering and exchange, including the three workshops, the completion of the working-group report, the public reviews of the working-group report, and preparation of the NIEHS report to Congress; this is 6% of all EMF-RAPID funding.