Chemical and Biological Characterization of Particulate Matter (PM 2.5) and Volatile Organic Compounds Collected at Different Sites in the Los Angeles Basin
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
- Can the authors comment in the manuscript that when were these samples collected and how many times were they collected? Will the results be affected by the season in which the samples were collected?
- Can the authors comment on quantitatively how will each level (Prooxidant reactivity, proinflammatory responses, electrophile reactivity, and anti-inflammatory responses) affect the human health? Are there any studies or regulations on those levels? Are there any studies to support that this low level exposure of VOCs could cause human health issues?
Author Response
We thank this reviewer also for the careful review and helpful comments.
- The seasons (months) of sample collections are summarized in line 115-117.
- The reviewer raises very appropriate questions. Unfortunately, there is very little data available relating quantitative chemical properties to quantitative biological effects in human studies. The issue of VOC properties has been examined in two studies we feel are relevant and described in lines 402 to 414. Hopefully, the lack of information will encourage others to address the problem.
Reviewer 2 Report
Regarding the manuscript entitled “Chemical and biological characterization of particulate matter (PM 2.5) and volatile organic compounds collected at different sites in the Los Angeles Basin”. The manuscript is well written and presented, and the work is innovative. I believe that the study is important, since it presents some first, very promising results on the evaluation of the distinct chemical reactivities and biological profile of PM2.5 and VOCs from ambient samples. The authors should be careful with the format of the manuscript and follow a uniform style across the paper. Taking everything into account, I find the study suitable to be published after minor revisions.
Author Response
We wish to thank the reviewer for the careful review and helpful comments. We apologize for the problem with the fonts; we used two versions of Word in the preparation of the manuscript, one of which was a Japanese version whose fonts differed from those used in an English version. The current version was prepared with the English version and is consistent.
We have included letter based identification of the figures with more than one graph.
