From the journal Environmental Science: Atmospheres Peer review history

09-Jul-2024

Dear Dr O'Shaughnessy:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-05-2024-000055
TITLE: Unpaved Road Particulate Matter Emission Rates and Vehicle-Induced Transient Plume Characteristics

Thank you for your submission to Environmental Science: Atmospheres, published by the Royal Society of Chemistry. I sent your manuscript to reviewers and I have now received their reports which are copied below.

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Dr Tzung-May Fu
Associate Editor
Environmental Science: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry

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Reviewer 1

The study is well-written and the results are clearly presented. The methodology used is scientifically sound, pretty standard for inverse modelling studies. In my opinion, the study is suitable to be published.

Reviewer 2

The article titled "Unpaved Road Particulate Matter Emission Rates and Vehicle-Induced Transient Plume Characteristics" provides a comprehensive analysis of particulate matter emissions from unpaved roads and the characteristics of vehicle-induced transient plumes. The study is interesting, and the data is presented in a detailed manner. However, the manuscript can benefit from improvements in the following aspects.

1. Condense the abstract to highlight key findings and their implications without excessive detail.\
2. There is some redundancy in explaining the health impacts of PM and the prevalence of unpaved roads.
3. Descriptions of study sites and instrumentation are detailed but can be complemented with visuals.
4. Figures and tables should be clearly linked to the corresponding text.
5. Simplify the presentation of statistical data, focusing on key results and their implications. Provide detailed data in supplementary materials if necessary.

REVIEWER REPORT(S) and RESPONSES:
Referee: 1

Comments to the Author
The study is well-written and the results are clearly presented. The methodology used is scientifically sound, pretty standard for inverse modelling studies. In my opinion, the study is suitable to be published.

RESPONSE: The authors are grateful for the time spent by the first referee in reviewing the manuscript and are happy to read the result of that effort that the manuscript is worthy of publication.

Referee: 2

Comments to the Author
The article titled "Unpaved Road Particulate Matter Emission Rates and Vehicle-Induced Transient Plume Characteristics" provides a comprehensive analysis of particulate matter emissions from unpaved roads and the characteristics of vehicle-induced transient plumes. The study is interesting, and the data is presented in a detailed manner. However, the manuscript can benefit from improvements in the following aspects.

RESPONSE: The authors are grateful for the time spent by the first referee in reviewing the manuscript. In complying with the requested changes below, the manuscript is certainly improved.

1. Condense the abstract to highlight key findings and their implications without excessive detail.
RESPONSE: The abstract was carefully reviewed for unnecessary information, which was deleted to condense it as requested. The key findings – typical PM concentrations near the road, the emission factor developed by inverse modeling, and the average PM concentration generated by a car’s plume were retained. Originally 232 words, now 196.

2. There is some redundancy in explaining the health impacts of PM and the prevalence of unpaved roads.
RESPONSE: Without further information from the reviewer, we were unable to find multiple occurrences of health impacts of PM in the manuscript. A word search on “health” revealed that it only occurs three times in the short, opening paragraph where this information is expected and then once in the Conclusion where it is also expected. Likewise, the prevalence of unpaved roads was highlighted in the first paragraph and not described later other than to emphasize the “millions of miles of unpaved roads” when stressing the scarcity of studies conducted to monitor PM near them near the end of the Introduction. Again, this would be an expected statement to emphasize the gap in science that this manuscript is attempting to fill. We therefore could not find specific wording to edit in response to this comment.

3. Descriptions of study sites and instrumentation are detailed but can be complemented with visuals.
RESPONSE: Two additional figures are now provided in the Supplement (S4 and S5) that contain photographs of the sample shed and PM sampling instrument to compliment the three aerial photographs of the study sites already in the Supplement (S1 – S3).

4. Figures and tables should be clearly linked to the corresponding text.
RESPONSE: Thank you for this comment as it resulted in our discovery that Figure 3 was not mentioned in the text. All other figures and tables in the body of the manuscript and supplement were correctly cited in the text. We added the following text to explain Figure 3, which also helps to support our final conclusions concerning the effect of these elevated concentrations on sensitive individuals.

“Figure 3 provides probability plots of the average plume concentrations and corresponding peak concentrations, which demonstrate that peak concentrations were typically 4- to 5-fold higher than average concentrations.”

We also discovered that we also failed to enumerate the last table provided as “Table 3” (it was referred to as Table 2), although it was correctly stated in the text. However, based on the next comment, the first table was deleted causing a renumbering of the remaining tables. Again, we thank the reviewer for bringing these errors to our attention, which have been corrected in the manuscript.

5. Simplify the presentation of statistical data, focusing on key results and their implications. Provide detailed data in supplementary materials if necessary.
RESPONSE: To comply with this comment, we have deleted Table 1 (information added to the manuscript text instead) and reduced Tables 2 and 3 to only report geometric means of the key exposure characteristics measured during this study. As suggested, additional tables were added to the supplement (S1, S2, S5) to incorporate all descriptive statistics as originally provided in Tables 1, 2 and 3.

19-Aug-2024

Dear Dr O'Shaughnessy:

Manuscript ID: EA-ART-05-2024-000055.R1
TITLE: Unpaved Road Particulate Matter Emission Rates and Vehicle-Induced Transient Plume Characteristics

Thank you for submitting your revised manuscript to Environmental Science: Atmospheres. I am pleased to accept your manuscript for publication in its current form. I have copied any final comments from the reviewer(s) below.

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With best wishes,

Dr Tzung-May Fu
Associate Editor
Environmental Science: Atmospheres
Royal Society of Chemistry

Reviewer 2

The authors have addressed my concern. In my opinion, it should be published in this journal.