The Task Force Working Group and its project groups continued to coordinate interagency activities regarding the relationship between environmental pollution and human disease and the development of research recommendations aimed at reducing or preventing the incidence of environmentally related disease. The Task Force sponsored two important workshops targeting (1) the relationship between environmental factors and nononcogenic lung disease, and (2) the assessment of human exposure to environmental pollutants. A resulting Task Force recommendation to Congress calls for longitudinal studies of human populations as a basis for quantifying risk factors in the causation and aggravation of a group of lung diseases and for designing cost-effective prevention strategies. Other recommendations encourage support of legislative proposals to facilitate access to data required in the conduct of epidemiological studies and the continuation and improvement of the National Death Index under the NCHS.