Monitoring of air quality before the Olympic Games Rio 2016.

For the accomplishment of Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro city (Rio 2016), the government of the Rio de Janeiro state has undertaken to monitor air quality before and during the events. In Beijing, China, and Athens, Greece, the air quality was monitored in Olympic venues in order to evaluate the athletes' performance in relation to the environment in which they were exposed. This study has the same proposal to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The air quality scenario of the three previous years (2013, 2014, 2015) of Rio 2016 was considered. Coarse (PM10) and fine (PM2.5) particles and O3 were monitored continuously on the stations located near to competition venues, as required by International Olympic Committee (IOC). The levels registered ranged from 6 to 96 μg m-3 for PM10, 1 to 44 μg m-3 for PM2.5 and 121 to 269 μg m-3 for O3. These concentrations exceeded the national and international air quality standards. These high concentrations are associated with uncountable civil works to build Olympic arenas and the urban mobility´s improvement. However, the concentrations for all the pollutants monitored in Rio de Janeiro city were in lower concentrations than in Beijing Olympic Games 2008.