Methodology for Estimating the Lifelong Exposure to PM2.5 and NO2—The Application to European Population Subgroups
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
You have done a good harmonisation job, in the sense that you have unified many theories. As you state when you describe your data, many of the sets follow a log normal distribution. When you have that kind of variables, the best central descriptive estimator is the geometric mean, not the arithmetic one. So, I think you could improve your work being aware of that, and changing your equations accordingly.
Nevertheless, I think those improvements could be done in an other paper. Re doing all calculations is so time consuming!
However, I have found many editing errors you should correct.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
Author Response
Point 1: You have done a good harmonisation job, in the sense that you have unified many theories. As you state when you describe your data, many of the sets follow a log-normal distribution. When you have that kind of variables, the best central descriptive estimator is the geometric mean, not the arithmetic one. So, I think you could improve your work being aware of that, and changing your equations accordingly.
Response 1: thanks a lot for the comment. I totally agree that the geometric mean is a better estimator for the log-normal distribution. However, the result would be tricky if we use the geometric mean in this study since we would like to show the source distribution of the total exposure. For example, we could not calculate the geometric mean of the exposure due to ETS since there are people not affected by the indoor smoking (the exposure would be 0) according to the input data we have. Hence, we used the arithmetic mean in this study instead of the geometric mean.
Point 2: However, I have found many editing errors you should correct.
Response 2: We have modified the errors in the compiled file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Review of “Methodology for estimating the lifelong exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 - the application to European population subgroups” by Li and Friedrich
This draft by Li and Friedrich developed an exposure model by combining a time-use survey, MTUS, and a mass-balance model to investigate pollutant exposure patterns for different socio-economic conditions. While it is an interesting and necessary study, current version of manuscript is not enough to be considered for publication in Atmosphere.
My main concern is that the model uses lots of assumptions, and I do not see the model is fully evaluated in current version of manuscript. While authors mentioned that “Detailed information for the methods together with other input data utilised in this paper for simulating the pollutant concentration in different micro-environments is given in Li (2019)”, I was not able to find the article because it was not properly referenced. I hope authors to resubmit the manuscript later after Li (2019) is published.
Author Response
This draft by Li and Friedrich developed an exposure model by combining a time-use survey, MTUS, and a mass-balance model to investigate pollutant exposure patterns for different socio-economic conditions. While it is an interesting and necessary study, current version of manuscript is not enough to be considered for publication in Atmosphere.
My main concern is that the model uses lots of assumptions, and I do not see the model is fully evaluated in current version of manuscript. While authors mentioned that “Detailed information for the methods together with other input data utilised in this paper for simulating the pollutant concentration in different micro-environments is given in Li (2019)”, I was not able to find the article because it was not properly referenced. I hope authors to resubmit the manuscript later after Li (2019) is published.
Response: thanks a lot for the comment. We have cited the right refercence and added more information about the data and methods that we have used.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
There was no concern with the format / spelling / English of the article, only with the content, whether or not to be published.
This paper describes the methodology framework developed is applicable to European countries to simulate the lifelong exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 for different socio-demographic subgroups.
This approach was applied to the population in the EU27 countries plus Norway and Switzerland. Results show that the annual average exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 at European level kept increasing from the 1950s to a peak between the 1980s and the1990s, and showed a decrease until 2015 due to the implementation of a series of directives. The paper is well written and the text is clear and easy to read. The conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented.
In the text have many “Error! Reference source not found“. Check and correct references.
Author Response
Point 1: There was no concern with the format/spelling/ English of the article, only with the content, whether or not to be published.
This paper describes the methodology framework developed is applicable to European countries to simulate the lifelong exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 for different socio-demographic subgroups.
This approach was applied to the population in the EU27 countries plus Norway and Switzerland. Results show that the annual average exposure to PM2.5 and NO2 at European level kept increasing from the 1950s to a peak between the 1980s and the1990s, and showed a decrease until 2015 due to the implementation of a series of directives. The paper is well written and the text is clear and easy to read. The conclusions are consistent with the evidence and arguments presented.
Response 1: thanks a lot for the encouragement.
Point 2: However, I have found many editing errors you should correct.
Response 2: We have modified the errors in the compiled file.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 2 Report
Thanks for the revision.
Author Response
Dear Reviewer,
thanks a lot for your comments. We have modified this part by adding more information. We have marked the changes in yellow.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
