Intake fractions of primary conserved air pollutants emitted from on-road vehicles in the United States

Abstract

Vehicular air pollutant emissions are characterized by a high degree of spatial variability that is correlated with the distribution of people. The consequences of the spatial association between emissions and exposed populations have not been fully captured in lifecycle and other impact assessments. The intake fraction (iF) quantifies aggregate air-pollutant exposures attributable to sources. Utilizing source–receptor (S–R) relationships derived from the US Environmental Protection Agency's AERMOD steady-state plume model, we quantify the intake fraction of conserved pollutants emitted from on-road mobile sources and report here the first characterization across approximately 65,000 census tracts of the conterminous United States. Considering exposures out to 50 km from the source, the population-weighted mean iF is 8.6 parts per million (ppm). The population-weighted median generally increases with geographic scale, from 3.6 ppm for census tracts to 4.2 ppm for counties, and 5.1 ppm for states, while the population-weighted interquartile range (IQR) progressively narrows as geographic scale increases: 0.85–8.8 ppm for census tracts, 1.5–8.5 ppm for counties, and 3.2–7.5 ppm for states. Across the four US Census regions, the population weighted median iF varies from 2.2 ppm (South) to 7.5 ppm (West), and the census-tract IQR spans an order of magnitude in each region (2.1–17 ppm in the West; 0.55–6.9 ppm in the Midwest; 0.45–5.5 ppm in the South; and 1.8–18 ppm in the Northeast). The population-weighted mean intake fraction for populous urban counties is about two orders of magnitude greater than for sparsely populated rural counties. On a population-weighted average basis and considering the 50 km analysis range, 75% of the intake occurs in the same county as emissions.