Health effects of particulate emissions from road transport have been of interest for many years. Historically, particulate emissions from road vehicles have been controlled and progressively reduced through legislation based on particulate mass measurement. More recently, interest has extended into more specific characteristics of particle emissions such as size, number, surface area and composition.

PARTICULATES was 3.5 year project launched in April 2000 as a common project cluster with ARTEMIS. It was launched under the 'Competitive and Sustainable Growth' Programme of the European Commission's Fifth Framework Programme for research (FP5) and was funded by the Directorate-General for Energy and Transport (Contract No. 2000-RD.10429).

The project involved 22 partners from nine European Countries and involved two external consultants from USA and Austria. The Laboratory of Applied Thermodynamics in the Aristotle University Thessaloniki acted as the project coordinator. The 'PARTICULATES' Consortium was established to develop further knowledge on particulate emissions from motor vehicles, including characterisation of particulate size and number emissions, with current and future vehicles and fuels.