The Intake Fraction Approach to Estimating Health Damages
An intake fraction measures the change in population-weighted ambient concentrations of
a pollutant (e.g., PM2.5) per unit of primary pollutant emitted from a pollution source. For
example, if Q is emissions of PM2.5 from a power plant in grams per second, ΔCi is the change in
ambient PM2.5 in grid cell i resulting from Q, Pi is the population of the grid cell and BR is the
average breathing rate, then the intake fraction is defined as: