Particulate Matter Characterization in a Hospital’s Underground Car Park

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors take into consideration the important topic of air quality in a peculiar environment. In fact, as underline in the paper, the surrounding hospitals common areas are not well studied, reporting “Little information is available about the health risks associated with time spent in underground parking garages.” In these areas are present patients, families and workers and the air quality is very important.

At this purpose, WHO published in 2021 the global air quality guidelines on particular matter (PM2.5 e PM10, ozone, nitrogen dioxide, sulfure dioxide, carbon monoxide, but no reference is present in this paper.

I retain necessary to consider the WHO guidelines also in Discussion.

Moreover, I suggest to add the Conclusions in order to synthesize the main results of the study and the prespectives.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper “Particulate matter characterization in a hospital’s underground car park” of  Héctor García-González analyzed the concentration of different PM in the underground car park of hospital .. in ??

1 1.Please complete Authors' Institute Address (Lanes 6-12).

22.It is never mentioned the hospital name, where it is (city nation) if it is located in the city's center or the suburbs. Please complete the information.

33.The authors analyze the different concentrations in the parking, but what are the daily concentrations of the city where the hospital is located? This analysis would be essential to compare them with those recorded in the parking lot.

4.4. PM4- I have found this indication for the first time; why do the authors focus on this dimension?     The PM2, 5 is defined the respirable fraction, which contains discrete concentrations of the smallest particles (PM1 and UFP). There is no European regulation on PM4, perhaps in Spain, where it is deduced that the hospital is located by the author's surname as there is nowhere a reference to the state of origin!

55.Finally, someone for work resides in the parking for lot time? If so, the search would make sense, but if not, most people will remain in the parking lot for 15 minutes and rarely every day. Consequently, the same frail people will breathe equal or higher levels of pollutants throughout the day (even in public underground car parks), and I do not think 15 minutes in that car park makes a big difference to their health.

66. Finally, all the research applies to any underground and car parking in any city if there are no adequate ventilation systems.

Minor

 Lane 98 99 --- ¡Error! No se encuentra el origen de la referencia. ?

Lanes 241 -- According to ¡Error! No se encuentra el origen de la referencia ?

Author Response

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Reviewer 3 Report

I kindly ask the authors to pay more attention to writing a scientific article. The results presented here do not bring fundamental contributions in the field, but such scientific reports with original results are necessary, and could attract the attention of the issues mentioned by the authors in the text. However, some phrases need to be rewritten, English needs to be improved. 

Please find below some aspects that must be improved.

Line 98: error when performing the citation – this error is repeated in the text.

Figure 3: I ask the authors to use on the axes the same format of the unit of measurement as in the text, namely: part/cm^3. Here it would not be better to use the units of measurement particles/cm^3?

It's not clear to me what "average day" means. This expression is used twice as text and recommends authors to reword.

Figure 4 – left: for what period of time are the values presented? Please specify in the text!

If the figures specify the units of measurement in μm, so it should be in the text. Ex: 0.265 μm in figure, 265 nm in text. Also, even within the same phrases I use either μm or nm. I ask the authors to choose the same unit of measurement everywhere, both in the text and in the figures.

Figure 4 and 5: Where is psd and where is the NCP?? Line 263: PMC? Or NCP? Please pay attention in the text!

I propose that chapter 3 become "Results and Discussions" and chapter 4: Conclusions.

Author Response

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Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The manuscript has been sufficiently improved and it is accepted for publication on Powders. Congratulations for your research in this interesting topic.

Author Response

The authors gratefully thank the Referee for the constructive comments and recommendations, which help to improve the readability and quality of the paper.

Reviewer 2 Report

Mistake  in figure 2 (histogram ) PM4,25  vs PM2,5 

Author Response

The authors gratefully thank the Referee for the constructive comments and recommendations, which help to improve the readability and quality of the paper.  Figure 2 was corrected and the English spell was double-checked with minor changes.

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors considered all the observations and now the article is much improved.

The presented results are very interesting and such studies are necessary even if the results presented confirm what other studies have already shown, they are original and presented in a way that even an passionate reader would understand the impact of pollution.

Author Response

The authors gratefully thank the Referee for the constructive comments and recommendations, which helped to improve the readability and quality of the paper.