Better understanding the behavior of air pollutants at shutdown times – results of a short full lockdown

Weekend effect of air pollutants in small and medium-sized cities: The role of policies stringency to COVID-19 containment

“…At the same time, we sought to meet the recommendations proposed by the WHO in its recent air quality guide (WHO, 2021), and to evaluate small and medium-sized cities with characteristic levels of pollution, greatly differentiating the classic studies performed in large urban centers. After the disclosure of this concern, there has been a growing number of studies investigating these areas and smaller cities ( Jesenko et al, 2022 ; Tavella et al, 2022a , 2022b ; Trček, 2022 ).…”

“…The levels of all assessed atmospheric pollutants (O 3 , NO 2, SO 2, PM 2.5 and PM 10 ) were obtained from satellite data of the Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) and manually obtained in real time from The Weather Channel application (IBM, USA). The procedure was performed according to Da Silva Júnior et al (2020) and other studies ( Carvalho et al, 2022 ; da Silva Júnior, 2022 ; Tavella et al, 2022b ). To ensure data quality control, all extractions were performed at regular intervals and by trained personnel.…”