Source Apportionment and Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Karst Water from Abandoned Mines in Zhangqiu, China
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Manuscript Title: Source apportionment and health risk assessment of heavy metals in karst water from abandoned mines
The subject of the work is very important. However, the presentation and English language is very poor. Materials and methods are not described properly. The author must rewrite the manuscript. Following few points, I have highlighted for the authors.
1. The abstract is not sound, and it needs to be rewritten. I suggest the authors use past tense.
“Health risk assessment shows that the health risk of adults is slightly higher than that of children, and the health risk index of 13 samples exceed the risk control value. The carcinogenic health risk is 4 orders of magnitude higher than the non-carcinogenic health risk. The heavy metals with carcinogenic risk to human body in the accident site are Cr and Cd. The heavy metal content in the groundwater is significantly affected by the pollution accident, and the impact of mine production and mine water inflow on the groundwater environment before the accident still exists. “_ Please rewrite.
2. Please write the keywords in alphabetical order.
3.“Groundwater is an important source of fresh water for drinking water and domestic water” _ Rewrite this as “Groundwater is an important source for drinking and domestic purposes”
4. “In the study of the health risk of heavy metals in groundwater, there are many studies on the evaluation of one of the water periods, and the evaluation results often have time limitations[7-8].” _Please Rewrite
5. The introduction needs to be rewritten citing proper background studies and stating the objective of the present work clearly.
“In this paper, the groundwater in this area was systematically sampled, the concentration of chemical components and other indicators were tested, the hydrochemical characteristics of groundwater were analyzed [22],” – is it your work or that of the ref 22? Rephrase it
6. “ Research area overview and research methods”- Write it as “Materials and methods”
7. “Shanggaocun Coal Mine’- where is it located, please write
8. Write the total area as sq meter
9. “The study area is a warm temperate semi-humid continental monsoon climate, with four distinct seasons; spring is dry and windy, summer rainfall is concentrated, autumn is mild and cool, and winter snow is less cold.” _ Please rewrite with clarity for better understanding
10. “The site of this pollution accident is located in a closed coal mine field. There are coal mining subsidence areas on the surface of the site, and coal mining roadways and fault fracture zones are distributed underground. Due to the artificial dumping behavior, the pollutants enter the coal mine roadway through the shaft in the site, which may flow along the roadway, fault fissures, and goaf, and some of them reside in the collapse area around the accident well. Therefore, it mainly affects the carbonate fissure karst water and clastic rock with carbonate karst fissure water, which is the irrigation water for local villagers.” _ Please remove this part from Section 2.2 and the author may move it to Section 2.1. However, Section 2.1 has become too lengthy. Please write briefly.
11. “Figure 2. Distribution of Groundwater Sampling Points” – Please elaborate the figure caption. The reader needs to understand the figure at first sight.
12. Where are the methods used for analyzing different parameters mentioned in section 2.2?
13. Write detail about “certified reference materials”
14. The materials and method section must include subsections of Chemicals used and their purchase detail, Instrumention, etc.
15. Section 2.3: You must rewrite this section. It looks like this work is on Principal component analysis, not on “health risk assessment of heavy metals in karst water from abandoned mines”. Please remove the description on PCA.
16. Section 2.5 : Remove the para before sec 2.5.1 . The author may think of moving it to introduction
17. Tables: write the first letter of the headings in uppercase. Define the abbreviation in the footnote.
18. Before the Introduction section, a list of abbreviations used will be very helpful
19. Reduce the spaces used while writing the units, throughout the manuscript. It is appearing difficult to understand.
20. Results and discussion: “The data show that the pH of water samples in this area varies from 3.10 to 7.7, with an average of 6.54. The variation ranges of TDS and TH were 513.00 mg / L-34 400.00 mg / L and 342.00 mg / L-2 930.00 mg / L, with the mean values of 4 471.59 mg / L and 1 235.19 mg / L, respectively. The range of COD was 0.95 mg / L ~ 504.6 mg / L, with an average of 70.9 mg / L.” – use of unnecessary spacing creating problem to understand the data. Check thoroughly the whole manuscript
21. In table 3, what is Ph? –be careful
22. “Table 4. Statistical Table of Single Factor Pollution Index and Comprehensive Pollution Index Samples”_ Remove the word table, you may write data
23. Section 3.3
“According to the health risk assessment model and the concentration data of heavy metal elements ( As, Cd, Cr, Ni, Zn, Pb, Hg, Cu ) in groundwater, the average annual health risks of adults and children exposed to drinking water and skin infiltration were calculated.”_ It needs to be rephrased
24. Write “box plot” instead of “Box shaped statistical chart”
25. Does Table 5 data are also being presented in Fig 5 and 6?
26. 3.4.1Analysis of relationship
Correlation analysis is to analyze multiple variable elements with correlation to measure the correlation between the ion contents of water samples in the study area ---Please rewrite
27. “In this paper, Origin 2021 software is used to calculate the Pearson correlation coefficient and analyze the correlation between groundwater ion content in the study area.” - this is repetitive and need not mention here.
28. Fig 7 is not at all clear. Please remove the lower triangle. Moreover, lower triangle data are not all clear.
29. “The red number represents a positive correlation, and the blue number represents a negative correlation. The darker the color, the stronger the correlation.” – the scale of the figure is telling this. No necessity to mention these.
30. “Table 6. Rotating Component Matrix of Main Water Quality Indicators Concentration in Groundwater” – Change the first letter of the words to lowercase.
31. Write the formulae of the chemicals or ions correctly
32. Conclusion is too lengthy…… The author must Rewrite it
33. Reference needs to be checked thoroughly.
34. For rewriting this work the author may inspire by the article available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2021.100173
35. Number of figure and tables are large. The author may think of presenting a few in the mode of supplementary material.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.pdf
The English language must be improved.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
This manuscript (Source apportionment and health risk assessment of heavy metals in karst water from abandoned mines) addresses an important topic about groundwater contamination and the associated health risk from multi-route exposure to toxic metals, but the current form should be improved.
1. The manuscript requires editing of the English language and style.
2. China should be mentioned in the title.
3. The authors used the term (Heavy Metals) in their study. They mentioned Arsenic as heavy metal, but it is usually classified as a metalloid. I suggest replacing heavy metals with one of these terms Heavy Metal(oid)s or Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs). In addition, the authors present the measured element in several orders throughout the manuscript, it is better to use a single order for these metals. I recommend using alphabetical order.
4. Abstract: The abstract section should be improved. The findings about hydrochemical characteristics should be included in the abstract.
5. Introduction: The introduction does not provide sufficient background knowledge about the problem at hand. This section must be thoroughly edited and rewritten. Please provide more information regarding previous research on the impact of mining on groundwater contamination worldwide and in China (Please see: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.coesh.2022.100347; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15050965; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2023.162274; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gexplo.2020.106559; https://doi.org/10.1002/tqem.21767; https://doi.org/10.1080/03067319.2021.2023511; https://doi.org/10.1186/s40064-016-2023-x; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15071421; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.153741; https://doi.org/10.3390/toxics10070390; https://doi.org/10.3390/w15061169; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192013359; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192114434; https://doi.org/10.3389/fenvs.2022.926866; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145003; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.148420; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2022.114286; https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-25019-9). It is strongly advised that you use the provided examples in your introduction and to support your discussion. Furthermore, the last paragraph of the introduction should clearly outline the study objectives.
6. Section 2.1; Please support the presented information with literature.
7. Figure 1; Please enhance the quality of this figure. Make sure to identify all symbols and abbreviations in the figure.
8. Figure 2; Please enhance the quality of this figure (Long. and Lat. and a clear scale). Please add a base map showing the exact location of the study area in China.
9. Section 2.2; Please support the presented information and methods with literature. Also, you must provide all instrument details, as well as Quality Control and Assurance information, including analytical quality control, accuracy, certified reference materials, and detection limits.
10. Section 2.3; Please support the presented information with literature. Also, you should rewrite this section to make it more concise and to the point.
11. Section 3; The authors failed to discuss the presented results. This section must be completely revised and represented. The discussion of the results should be supported by comparative literature.
12. Figure 3; Please reconsider the figure caption (distribution map??).
13. Figure 4; The data in this figure is confusing. It would be better if this data was presented as a distribution pattern (Please see for example, https://doi.org/10.3390/land11091560).
14. It will be better if the conclusions are well-motivated and supported by results.
The English language is really poor, with several grammatical errors and unclear sentences. In addition to inadequate formatting.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Respected Authors
As a mining engineer I expected something related to the mechanism of pollution spread from abandoned mines. In fact, the study is focused more on environmental issues. But still it seems to be interesting.
Some critical comments are listed below.
1. The reference list is based on Chinese experience only. That is not acceptable in international journals. You should make a survey in Scopus and/or MDPI search engine and choose recent papers that form the actual State of the Art.
2. Concerning the format of your reference list, it may be clearly seen that the paper was originally formatted to another template. So the work was already rejected or is still considered in another journal. The Authors should clarify that issue.
3. Results are presented together with their discussion. That would be acceptable if your results were presented in the light of other Researchers' findings. Otherwise, the value of the discussion is very much limited.
4. Due to lack of wider discussion, your conclusions have limited importance and cannot be transferred to other sites or countries. Please try to refer to international sources and try to provide information that could be of worldwide interest..
5. Anyway, try to make some reservations concerning limited applicability of your study.
6. In the current form, your paper should be considered as Technical Note.
7. Concerning the reference list again, please mark clearly the references that are written in Chinese (if any).
Sincerely
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
The manuscript has now been improved drastically. However, the following few points need to be addressed.
The abstract is too lengthy. I suggest writing it concisely.
Please write the keywords in alphabetical order.
Line 51-52: Please check the error
The materials and method section must include subsections on Chemicals used and their purchase detail, instrumentation, etc.
The methods used for analyzing different parameters need to be explained.
Line 218-235: Please remove this part from the manuscript. This part is unnecessarily increasing the length of the paper. I have not asked earlier to remove the principal component analysis of your data.
Define KMO in its first appearance.
Table 3: Use a bottom border after the first row.
Check the bibliography and put the references in the same style.
The English language has been improved in this version.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
The authors' improvements are good, but there are still certain issues to address.
1. The authors used the term (Heavy Metals) in their study. They mentioned Arsenic as heavy metal, but it is usually classified as a metalloid. I suggest replacing heavy metals with one of these terms Heavy Metal(oid)s or Potentially Toxic Elements (PTEs).
2. The findings about hydrochemical characteristics should be included in the abstract.
3. Section 2.1; Please support the presented information with literature.
4. Figure 1; Please enhance the quality of this figure. Make sure to identify all symbols and abbreviations in the figure (such as Q, C2-Pit, and OM).
5. Section 2.2; Please provide all instrument details (model, manufacturer, country), and the instruments used to measure pH and conductivity.
6. Section 2.3; Please support the presented information with literature. Also, you should rewrite this section to make it more concise and to the point. Avoid well-known information about the used statistical methods.
7. Section 3; The discussion of the results is still insufficient and is not supported by any references.
8. References style in the references list should be revised following the journal instructions.
The English language still needs to be revised.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
No further comments.
Author Response
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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
