TITLE:
Air Quality Monitoring and Its Implication on the Environmental Licensing Process in Brazil
AUTHORS:
José Carlos de Moura Xavier, Wilson Cabral de Sousa Junior
KEYWORDS:
Air Quality Monitoring; Public Policies; Environmental Licensing
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.1,
January
23,
2014
ABSTRACT: In the state of Sao Paulo,
Brazil, public policies regarding the air quality aimed at the welfare of the
population are strongly dependent on monitoring conducted by the Sao Paulo
State Environmental Company (CETESB), which can be influenced by faulty
monitors and equipment support and cuts in power supply, among others. A
research conducted from 1998 to 2008 indicated that a significant portion of
the air quality automatic stations in the state of Sao Paulo did not meet the
criterion of representativeness of measurements of PM10, NO2,
O3, CO and SO2 concentrations which resulted in the classification
of some municipalities as the nonattainment area, a situation evidenced for PM10 and O3 parameters. The network unavailability for each parameter was
estimated and compared with the monitoring networks operated in Canada and the
UK. This paper discusses the implications of the lack of representativeness of
measurements in the environmental licensing process of pollution sources from
2008, when by the effect of state law, municipalities have been qualified
according to their air quality nonattainment level.