Air pollution trends and exceedances: ozone and particulate matter outlook in Brazilian highly urbanized zones

Abstract

In Brazil, scarce air quality data hinders air pollutant chemical understanding and policy decisions regarding public health and environmental impacts. From this perspective, our study assessed the O3, PM2.5, and PM10 yearly and seasonal trends and also the WHO Air Quality Guidelines 2021 exceedance trends at 40 air quality stations located in four highly urbanized zones in Brazil (Belo Horizonte, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Espírito Santo) from early 1990s up to 2019. We applied the Mann–Kendall test aligned with Sen’s Slope estimator to assess the trends and the Cox-Stuart test to verify the WHO AQG 2021 exceedances trends. Our findings pointed out that the current national legislation is outdated when compared to WHO AQG 2021 values, leading to multiple exceedances episodes. We also found out that 62% of São Paulo’s stations presented O3 increasing trends, while in Rio de Janeiro 85.7% presented decreasing trends. The Cox-Stuart test pointed out that PM2.5 exceedance trends showcase positive values, and most of the significative values are located in São Paulo stations. Therefore, we endorse that the national legislation needs to be updated meanwhile the air monitoring network needs to expand its coverage.