Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Mercury Exposure among Populations and Environments in Contact with Electronic Waste

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Author/s,
The manuscript is written well.

There are some minor problem which would solve during proof reading, however, as you requested I reconsider the paper and suggest some minor comments.

 Please in attach find my comments.

 Regards

 

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank the reviewer for taking the time to read the paper.  There were 4 points raised:
1) word repeated in Abstract:  We have resolved this.

2) suggest deletion of "e-waste" from Keywords:  We have resolved this

3) Suggest shortening the title.  We would like to keep the title as-is.  We find it very informative, and it is similar to other titles in this area of research.

4) Under Data Analysis, suggest we examine data per countries:  Later in the paper we provide a summary of the data per country.  Given the relatively small number of countries, we do not feel comfortable drawing sweeping conclusions for a given country.  Hence, we made the decision to group countries together according to WHO region and present the data as such.

Reviewer 2 Report

In my opinion, the review is interesting and valuable and should be published in IJERPH. I recommend a minor revision according to the remarks in the attached file.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

We thank Reviewer #2 for taking the time to read our paper.  Here we provide a summary of our responses:
1. Some editorial/grammatical changes are requested in the Abstract and Introduction, and then later throughout in the paper. 

RESPONSE: The majority of these were changed in the paper (see the version with changes tracked).  However, 2-3 of them were not changed as the Senior Author is a native English Speaker, and re-reviewed the text to ensure that it was proper.

2. Clarification was requested on the date range of the search. 

RESPONSE: This was provided later in the Methods, but to be more helpful we have also mentioned it near the beginning.

3. Line 105: A list of all 78 articles found is requested.   

RESPONSE: This was a big omission on our part, and we thank the reviewer for noticing it.   We have now included a new Supplemental Table S3 that contains a list of all 78 articles.  

4. Line 333: Request to delete this paragraph.

RESPONSE: We prefer to keep it as it provides a reminder of what these particular population groups are.