Air pollution is one of the serious problems that the world currently facing. Their understanding it is very complex due to the close relationship of the pollutants, meteorological variables, and land uses influence their composition. Actually, there are two traditional approaches for collecting samples relevant to air and atmospheric deposition which are related to monitoring studies. The first approach involves the direct collection of airborne particulate matter (PM) which aimed quantitative studies at local, short/medium range or global transport of pollutants, including health-related studies related to size fractionate airborne particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10). Their application on large-scale implied expensive investments due to both high costs of maintenance and logistic problem to install the instrumental equipment at all needed locations. The second approach uses an air pollution monitor which is considered as a non-expensive, yet reliable, and relatively simple. Therefore, monitoring air quality by using living organisms as biomonitors has received increasing attention in recent years because certain types of biological organisms provide a measure of integrated exposure over certain amount of time and enrich the substance to be determined so that the analytical accessibility is improved and the measurements uncertainty reduced. In this work, the most of studies were approached in the use of biomonitors as tool suitable to assess the air quality of different locations. This thesis had six principal objectives: 1) passive biomonitoring with lichens; 2) biomonitoring of air quality near industrial area; 3) active biomonitoring with Tillandsia species; 4) a comparison of biomonitoring using three different species of Tillandsia; 5) air quality in 2016 Olympic Games; 6) correction of spectral overlap. Biomonitors were collected from control site, transplanted and exposed into the study area of interest for a time period determined to accumulate trace elements. Trace elements were measured by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and the concentrations results were treated with chemometric tools. Results show the ability of lichens and Tillandsia species to accumulate trace elements and chemometric tools helped to identify possible emission sources. In the first objective were identified three possible sources of emission: vehicular sources, soil resuspension (natural origin) and agricultural practices. In the second objective was proved that black particles were emitted mainly from leather industry. The third objective shows the vehicular emissions as the main source of pollution in the urban areas, use of agrochemicals in the peri-urban areas and soil resuspension represented by rural areas. The fourth objective shows that all Tillandsia species proved to be good biomonitors. The fifth objective demonstrated that strategies control and traffic regulation implanted by the government of Rio de Janeiro influenced in the reduction of pollutants during the Olympic period. In the sixth objective, Lasso shows better results when predict values of rare earth elements were analyzed.