As many of you may have noticed, the report this month is about air pollution. At first, I did not know what to talk about however, I decided to address the difference between air quality in different points of Rio de Janeiro metropolitan region. The data I am using on my discussion is extracted from the daily verification of air quality by the state environmental institute - INEA.

The first thing that really impressed me was the number of stations around the metropolitan region. They measure the quality in 25 distinct points, according to the methodology developed by the Environmental Protection Agency – EPA, and address the IQA (Quality air index), getting a number that can be linked to Levels of Health Concern using ranges determined by CONAMA (National Council of the Environment).

On March 18th, 20 stations considered the quality of the air as Good, 2 considered as Moderate, 1 considered Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups, and  2 considered as Unhealthy. The air quality changes every day depending on a lot of factors, such as temperature, humidity, and airspeed. Therefore, it is not possible to make any inferences analyzing only the IQA from this day without taking into consideration all the factors. However, most of the stations with IQA not good was close to the Industrial Pole in Duque de Caxias. Another thing is that most of the stations with IQA classified as not good also had high levels of ozone (O3) and particulate material. The problem of high levels of Ozone is the dangerous health problems that it can cause.

As I said, the inferences that I made considering the data from one day may not be representative of the reality. According to INEA annual report air for the year of 2014, the quality of the air in Rio de Janeiro can be classified as good, and they did not find any records of critique episodes for air pollution. They also addressed that the only pollutants that presented irregularities was Ozone, particulate material, and PM10 (particulate matter with a diameter less than 10 um). There were no problems with Carbon monoxide, Nitrogen Dioxide, and Sulfur Dioxide, even in industrial poles.

As a citizen of Rio de Janeiro, I never had drastic problems concerning air pollution. The only observation that I made is related with particulate material in bus stops along major highways. Sometimes you can feel a thick layer of particulate material on the skin. About to the data from INEA, I think that considering the size of Rio de Janeiro, the number of citizens, and the number of industries here, the results are quite ok. I am really impressed by the work done by INEA in measuring the quality of the air every day around the city. As we may agree, new technology is needed to help us improve even more.