In his essay “Visión de Anahúac” Alfonso Reyes frames and pictures what might have been

the first impressions of the Spanish conquerors when discovering, after a long expedition,
the city of Tenochtitlan: “Under their feet, at a speculum of crystal, there was the pinturesque
city, emanated all of it from the temple…To them, from the shadows of a dark and bloody
ritual, it came hooting the cry of the chirima and, multiplied in the echo, the beating of a wild
drum.” Five centuries have passed since then, and although every time frame in History has
brought its own destruction, change and new sets to the city, it remains imposing its powerful
personality to every newcomer in the shape of a peculiar combination of sounds, except that
now, instead of the prehispanic acustics and rythyms, there is the nonstopping flow of
vehicles passing through streets and avenues.
A somewhat overlooked, yet omnipresent existence built up to one of the most relevant
aspects of alteration nowadays. A thick vail that surrounds the city and its habitants.
“Traveler: you have reached the most transparent region of the air”. So it claims the epigraph
in the text of Alfonso Reyes, stablishing a far contrast point to the chaotic modern city,
monumental and polluted. In ancient times, its habitants would walk or use many different
types of ships for transportation; now, public and private vehicles jamming all of their
communication routes in such manner that, it is calculated, are the 80 percent of atmospheric
pollution. Added to that, the mountainous formations that enclose the Valle de México to its
four sides, shape natural obstacles that prevent the adequate ventilation of the area, therefore,
easing the concentration of atmospheric contaminants.

With the purpose of measuring the concentrations of polluting elements in the atmosphere,
this region has been defined as a unity that has received the name of Metropolitan Zone of
the Valle de México. This is a yesteryear region made by five lakes of sweet and salty water,
framed to its four cardinal points by a series of mountainous elevations and sierras.
Historically characterized, among other things, by the settlement of large population nuclei
in this relatively narrow territory: some of its habitants were drawn to this region from other
parts of the country due to its better development and infrastructure, others would come from
different settlements apart from the metropolis when this one, on its constant expanding, took
over them.
This large demographic density attached to the geographical and climatological
circumstances of the region, are factors that can explain the deep and extended atmospheric
pollution. This type of contamination can be identified as “the presence in air of any matter
or energy in any of its physical states and shapes,

Esta clase de contaminación puede entenderse como “la presencia en el aire de toda materia
o energía en cualquiera de sus estados físicos y formas, que al incorporarse o actuar en la
atmósfera altera o modifica su composición y condición natural”.1 Aunque hay una gran
variedad de compuestos contaminantes producida por la actividad humana, en el caso de la
ciudad de México han sido seleccionados un conjunto de compuestos identificados por su
potencial de deterioro en la salud de las personas y en el medio natural. Estos compuestos,
conocidos como “contaminantes atmosféricos criterio” son principalmente las partículas
suspendidas, el Ozono, los Óxidos de nitrógeno, el Monóxido de carbono, el Bióxido de
azufre y el plomo. Con su identificación y con las mediciones de las concentraciones de cada
uno de ellos en la atmosfera, se busca, por una parte emitir advertencias oportunas a la
población y por otra, contar con datos confiable para el diseño de políticas públicas que
habiendo determinado procesos causantes de la contaminación del aire, sean capaces de
plantear las estrategias adecuadas para revertirlos.