Spatial Distribution, Pollution Characteristics, and Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Soils from a Typical Agricultural County, East China

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments-Manuscript Number: Agriculture-1922346

Title: Spatial Distribution, Pollution Characteristics, and Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Cultivated Soil in a Typical Hilly Area of East Shandong, China.

Article type: Research Paper

Thanks to the authors for the opportunity to read their manuscript. The paper contains interesting and original observations. The paper falls within the Aims and Scope of the journal. The abstract covers the information presented in the manuscript. The paper has an appropriate structure, it is well written and contains up-to-date references. The English typing is adequate. In general, I find this work very interesting, and it is giving important information for researchers dealing with distribution, pollution, and health risks of heavy metals in cultivated soils.

I have only two suggestions:

1) The authors should give more data to support the statements in the abstract.

2) Part of the Keywords is redundant with the title. Please change them or delete them.

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Heavy metals are added to the soil from various sources and their presence in the soil no doubt possess potential ecological risk and health hazard to human and animals via direct exposure or food chain. The present manuscript entitled “Spatial Distribution, Pollution Characteristics, and Health Risk Assessment of Heavy Metals in Cultivated Soil in a Typical Hilly Area of East Shandong, China” is a quality research conducted by the authors. I appreciated the hard work and research concerns of the authors. However, despite the importance of the idea, the manuscript language in most section is confused and seems very poor, although I am not native to English. Moreover, I highlighted some changes in different sections of the manuscript, which may further aid in the quality of the manuscript. Therefore, I will recommend major revision with thorough text filtration for improvement.

Title: title is lengthy of possible reduces the length “in a typical hilly area” not needed in the title.

Abstract

The abstract is very hard to understand, and difficult to come to some conclusions. It is because the abstract lacks the need for research, proper aims, and method—the abstract needs thorough revisions for a clear understanding of the readers. Some specific comments are:

-Line 18-21. Revise please very ill arrangement of the sentence.

-Line 21-23. Repetition of the title, please bring novelty in your statement to attract readers.

-Line 23-30. Very ill arrangement of the results.

-Conclusion missing.

Introduction

The introduction is to the point but need language improvement in the sentence structure and also looks out for topographic mistakes. Some specific comments are:

-Line 57-59. Is this sentence needed citation?? Please check.

-Line 64 and 65.. Repetition of correlation.

-Line 65. PMF Modeling??

Material and method

Well and comprehensive written but need topographic correction. In addition, it lacks informations on the soil texture, electrical conductivity, and nutrient like organic matter and nitrogen which play critical role in the availability and accumulation of the heavy metals.

-Line 121, remove “of” please.

-Please justify the use of two evaluation method, i.e. geoaccumualtion index and ecological risk index. Why not only single evaluation method was preferred.

-Table 1. Heavy metal contents in top soil... missing and citation for inhalation rate missing.

-mg·kg-1 remove . Because it represent multiplication which confuse the readers.

Results and Discussions

-Line 263. “Delete shown in” and write as (Table 3).

-Line 273. Is it “A Horizon?”

-Section 3.1. A suggestion.. If you feel that there is larger variation in metal contents as you shown from CV and median (Although I would personally suggest only mean value and standard deviations/Standard error for metal concentration), why not arrange data into some meaningful groups and then evaluate the variance and categories the sites which were highly polluted e.g. see the paper below

• Heavy Metals Contaminants in Watercress (Nasturtium officinale R. BR.): Toxicity and Risk Assessment for Humans along the Swat River Basin, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan
• Screening of Xanthium strumarium (IAPS) Growing on Abandoned Habitats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan: Perspectives for Phytoremediation

-Can you elaborate the source of heavy metals from the correlation and discuss it in its relevant place?

-Line 338. Did this study evaluate any effects of human activities on metal distribution?

-Line 408. PERI ??

-Suggestion. I feel that the discussion of Heavy metal contamination and Ecological risk index can be improved.

-Please clarify, you have calculated the hazard quotient, did the soil sustained some crop lands so that there are possibilities of metal ingestion via food chain or is there any anthropogenic activities where human labors are involved.

-Compete lack of metal in plants or some representative plant species of the region which are grown as major crop.

Conclusion

The conclusion is the repetition of the results. The conclusion needs to be refined and provide recommendations for further studies. In addition try to reduce the bulk of result repetition in conclusion.

Author Response

Please see attached file.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The manuscript has substantially been improved by the authors. However, I have a bit of concern in some areas of abstract which is very minor but better to be corrected.

Abstract line 20. Suggestion “Some site” if these can be specified.

Abstract line 22. Please remove “and had achieved certain result”.

Abstract Line 26. PERI.. First time should not be abbreviated.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,
Thank you very much for your time involved in reviewing the manuscript. We appreciate your clear and detailed feedback and hope that the explanation has fully addressed all of your concerns. 

The modifications we made are as follows: the unreasonable content (line 20 and line 22) is deleted, and the interpretation of PERI (potential ecological risk index, line 26) is added.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your time involved and this great opportunity for us to improve the manuscript. We hope you will find this revised version satisfactory.

Sincerely,
The Authors