Effect of Grit Size on Airborne Particle Concentration and Size Distribution during Oak Wood Sanding

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments to the manuscript applsci-1832133: Effect of Grit Size on Airborne Prticle Concentration and Size Distribution during Oak Wood Sanding

The present manuscript compares formed particles depending on the grit size of the sandpaper based on different quantification methods. The manuscript is within the scope of applsci and lingual presentation is fine. Scientifical results are presented clearly. Only a few aspects should be strongly taken into consideration to improve the quality of the manuscript.

·         Line 62: …are deposited onto the nasal septum of the nose and …

·         Introduction in general: The size of the relevant wooden particles formed is given (0.1 -10 µm). However, it would be very helpful for readers to get an impression of the size by comparison with other other well known aerosol sizes. As examples:

o   Size of droplets during talking 25-50µm https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0067517

o   Size of droplets during coughing 4-7 µm https://doi.org/10.1016/S2213-2600(20)30323-4

o   Size of aerosols of air conditioners 0.3-10 µm https://doi.org/10.1002/rmv.2297

o   Size of aerosols in technical systems for humidification and spraying 0.3-10 µm https://doi.org/10.3390/su12219240

The last reference might be very interesting as the same aerosol monitor (DustTrak DRX8533) was used.

·         Line 182: The upper detection limit of the DRX8533 seems to be 10 µm (also according to the abstract. Please clarify.

·         Figure 3: The background level should also be shown as red line or similar within the figure, not only in the text, to see the increase of particles during the process.

Author Response

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Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript reports a study of effect of particle size and concentration during sanding process, it would be interesting for enterprises that have these kind of process, and for health of workers. The statistic is the base for this work, and a comparison between two methods is reported: SMPS and OPS, and is well supported, just some comments/corrections need to be done before continue the publication process, following they are detailed:

-I recommend that in Abstract delete the equipments descriptions (lines 21.22, 24) due this is indicated in experimental section.

-For figures 4 and 5 I recommend to enlarge the images due they are small, also try to short the figures captions due they are long.

 

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

Overall comment:

In this manuscript, the number concentration, size distribution and surface area of particle during oak wood sanding were studied. The effect of sanding grits on test results was also studied in detail. It is instructive to evaluate the harm of oak wood dust in woodworking shops to human beings. However, revision is recommended for publication. They are listed as follows.

 1) It was mentioned in line 209 of this article that " the average mass concentrations obtained by DustTrak DRX were paired with calculated average mass concentrations of OPS", please list the calculation formula.

 2) Please explain the possible reasons why the maximum observed number concentrations of P60 obtained using Nano Scan SMPS and OPS in Table 1 is slightly higher than that of P120.

 3) In line 285-288, we can conclude from Fig.4 (c) and (d) that the magnitudes of the results are different, how to understand that “the curves of LDSA associated with particular sanding paper grits performance are very similar?” What is the conclusion and purpose of this comparison? The authors may need to give a specific explanation.

 4) For the MD, Median Diameter and GMD ± GSD* data obtained in Table 1, why do the observation results of the two devices show opposite trends? Please explain the reason.

 5) In line 333 of this article, it was mentioned that " The decrease in the concentration of airborne particles in the test room was relatively slow, the original background value from before the start of sanding was reached only after approximately 3 hours", which should be supported by data.

 

Author Response

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