Office Indoor PM and BC Level in Lithuania: The Role of a Long-Range Smoke Transport Event
, Gediminas Mainelis 2, Simonas Kecorius 3, Agnė Minderytė 1, Vadimas Dudoitis 1, Inga Garbarienė 1, Kristina Plauškaitė 1, Jurgita Ovadnevaite 4 and Steigvilė Byčenkienė 1Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
I have no further comments.
I consider the subject of the manuscript to be highly relevant and the work it presents of interest to readers of Atmosphere. The manuscript is well structured and written and the methodology of the work is appropriate and the conclusions are well supported by the results obtained.
The manuscript addresses the impact of a long-range forest fire event on indoor air quality in an office building. The novelty of this work is twofold. On the one hand, it addresses the problem of indoor air quality in office buildings, an indoor setting that has received little attention to date compared to, for example, residential buildings or schools. On the other hand, it focuses on a long-range forest fire, an increasingly frequent outdoor pollution source accompanied by high particulate emissions, which poses a challenge to air filtration systems in office buildings, whose effectiveness under high level of outdoor PM has not been previously evaluated.
In their work, the authors evaluate the impact of a long-range forest fire (Luhansk, Ukraine) on indoor air quality in an office and the efficiency of the air filtration system installed in the office building (Vilnius, Lithuania) for a week, during which the wildfire was active for the first 4 days. To that aim, conditions were arranged inside the building in order to minimize indoor sources of air pollution (no equipment or human activity) and state-of-the-art aerosol instrumentation was used to measure both indoor and outdoor pollution together with a station of the regional air quality monitoring network that served as a reference for outdoor air pollution. In addition, available air mass transport and pollutant dispersion modelling tools provided insight into the atmospheric conditions at the site of the building, as well as into the transport and dispersion of dust and smoke in the atmosphere from the site of the fire.
A variety of aerosol-related parameters were measured directly (particle number size distribution PND, particle mass size distribution PMD, particle light scattering coefficients) or indirectly inferred (mass concentration of PM10, PM2.5, equivalent black carbon eBC, and brown carbon BrC) to gain insight into the size, number and mass concentration, and composition of airborne particles. Then, correlations were established between indoor and outdoor (I/O) values of these parameters for the event days (active fire) as well as for the non-event days.
Based on a thorough analysis of these correlations, the authors suggest improvements in the air quality management strategy in office buildings in the aspects of both air quality surveillance (separate eBC monitoring) and air quality control (HEPA filters instead of current standard filters).
Author Response
Authors are thankful for thorough examination and positive evaluation.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Please, see the attached document.
Comments for author File: Comments.pdf
Author Response
We thank the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
This is a well-written draft and can be accepted for publication after some major changes.
- Line 25: Make 2.5 as subscript in PM5.
- Line 35: Add the definition of PM5 (particles with aerodynamic diameter ≤ 2.5 µm)
- Line 35: “Wildfires are a significant source ……….” Only one citation is not enough to tell about the global scenario. Add some suitable recent citations.
- Lines 50–53: Add some more citations here regarding BC health effects from worldwide urban locations.
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.envpol.2021.116530
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.envpol.2019.113871
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.envres.2019.06.003
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2015.08.129
- Section 2.2: For AE-31 data, corrections must be used for multiple scattering and shadowing effects. Why this is not done? For this purpose, follow these papers
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.5194/amt-3-457-2010
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.1016/S0021-8502(03)00359-8
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.5194/acp-6-3443-2006
- Whenever you are denoting equivalent black carbon (eBC), then you must specify the MAC value. You have not discussed anything here. See Petzold et al (2013).
https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.5194/acp-13-8365-2013
- Then, you must discuss the uncertainty about all your measurements, eBC, PM5, and PM10
- The results and discussion part is fine and convincing. But, I am afraid about the data quality as no corrections are applied. After correcting the data results will change significantly. Do your best.
Good luck.
Author Response
Authors are very thankful to the reviewer for the comments, which increased the quality and value of the article.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
This revised draft is significantly improved and can be published now.
Author Response
We thank the anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments.
