Contamination of Water and Sediments of Harike Wetland with Phthalate Esters and Associated Risk Assessment

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript is a case study on the contamination of water and sediments of Harike wetland with phthalate esters. The topic is of interest since the phthalate esters are known for their contamination and toxicological effects on various environmental matrices, and the manuscript is well written.

Some improvements are necessary to increase the manuscript quality, as follows:

1.      Page 4, line 141, a reference number should be inserted after “Wu et al. 2010”

2.      Please explain why the LOQ are so high (generally >1 mg/L), if the maximum admitted concentrations according to the international quality standards (USEPA, EU directive) are in the order of µg/L. The previous reported data on the the “level of phthalates in lakes and rivers of China ranges from 0.006 μg/l to 23μg/l” (page 7, line 297). Your results are indeed in mg/L or μg/L? Please carefully check.

3.       References: please use the reference style according to the Instruction for authors (e.g. Author 1, A.B.; Author 2, C.D. Title of the article. Abbreviated Journal Name Year, Volume, page range).  Please use Abbreviated Journal Name for all the journals.

Author Response

The authors are thankful for your positive response thorough evaluation of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The abbreviations used may be defined at the first instance throughout the manuscript.

2. The references cited need a revision and many unnecessary be removed.

3. Do not put more than 2 references in the manuscript's text at one point.

4. Longitude and Latitude of the site must be mentioned in the Methods section.

5. Line 173 and 182 Where needs to be where and so on.

6. Fig 3 and 4 need revision of the error bar.

7. The authors have nicely described the results and correlated with similar regional findings.

8. conclusions may be quantified.

Author Response

The authors are thankful for your in-depth constructive review of the manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

A very interesting popular science article with a very high impact on human health. The authors have done quite a lot of research, analysed the results in an accurate way. The extensive (91 items) analysis of the literature on the subject deserves to be highlighted.
In the results of the research - in the figures, the standard deviation was missing, which should be supplemented. When talking about the influence of certain factors/physical quantities on 'something', the measurement error should always be given.

Author Response

We are thankful to learned reviewer for giving critical insights, leading to substantial improvement in the manuscript, we hope the response meets the reviewer's approval.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx