This paper presents an assessment of the air quality for the principal cities in developed and developing countries. Part of the vast and widely dispersed information on air quality that is available at this time on the Internet was compiled, thus making possible a comprehensive evaluation of the tendencies that emerged at the end of the 20th century. Likewise, these values are compared to the. air quality thresholds recommended by two international organizations: guideline levels of the World Health Organization (WHO) and limit values of the European Union (EU), in order to determine air quality concentration levels in large cities around the world. The current situation of air quality worldwide indicates that SO2 maintains a downward tendency throughout the world, with the exception of some Central American and Asian cities. NO2 maintains levels very close to the WHO guideline value around the world. For particulate matter, it is a major problem in almost all of Asia, exceeding 300 mug/m(3) in many cities. Ozone shows average values that exceed the selected guideline values in all of the analyses demonstrating that it is a global problem. In general, the worldwide trend is to a reduction in the concentrations of pollutants because of the increasingly strong restrictions which local governments and international organizations impose. However, in poor countries and those with low average incomes, concentrations of air pollutants remain high and the trend will be the elevation of their ground levels as they develop, making the problem even worse. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
