Safe Mining Assessment of Artisanal Barite Mining Activities in Nigeria

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper called  Safe Mining Assessment of Artisanal Barite Mining Activities  in Nigeria by

David Oluwasegun Afolayan, Azikiwe Peter Onwualu, Carrick McAfee Eggleston, Adelana Rasak Adetunji, Mingjiang Tao and Richard Kwasi Amankwah. There are some minor aspects I would like to highlight. There are some things that could be added to the paper to broaden the scope of the paper along with the group of potential readers:

 

• It is very interesting publication.Staw an important overview of mining activity in Nigieria.The authors describe their research quite clearly and transparently.
• It would be useful to state what the purpose and scope of the work is.
• Is future barite mining planned using technology?
• Do employed workers have medical examinations once a year?
• Whether the employer provides medical care?

The presented conclusions may be of fundamental importance, therefore they should be presented in a better light and the author(s) should emphasize the original research contribution. I believe, that suggested amendments will significantly increase the relevance of the publication and will improve it. After applying all required changes, the paper is suitable for publication.

Author Response

See attached the cover letter and a point-by-point response to the reviewer's 1 comments, please.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This paper reviewed the mining activities by the artisanal and small scale miners in Nigeria, and then examined some existing institutional frameworks and policies for ASMs. Besides, questionnaires were administered to local miners to identify the hazards caused by artisanal barite mining. This investigation has identified the major obstacles to safe mining in Nigeria and assesses potential health hazards to miners and environment, and a corresponding strategy was proposed for safe mining in Nigeria. The research content has a certain significance, which is conducive to safe mining and the health of miners. However, the paper needs to be supplemented with certain experimental test content. In Section 4.2, the absorbance bands are measured by UV-Vis spectra, and the atomic absorption spectroscopy (AAS) identifies and measures the concentration of Zn²⁺, Pb²⁺, Cd²⁺, Fe²⁺, and Cu²⁺. However, this part of the content lacks a specific test process, including test equipment, samples and experimental conditions. So please add these research contents. Besides, the authors need to check this paper carefully, including punctuation, such as Line 210. In summary, I recommend a minor revision for this paper.

Author Response

See attached the cover letter and point-by-point response to reviewer's 2 comments, please.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The manuscript provides an exciting overview of mining activities and associated hazards in Nigeria. The authors identified the main hazards to miners' environment, health, and life, primarily in the barite mining sector. This article is helpful and brings new knowledge about safety in Nigerian mining. The major strong sides of this manuscript are detailed information on the state of occupational safety of Artisanal and Small-scale Miners (ASM), as well as almost errorless English. The collected data are of fair interest to mining entrepreneurs and work safety organizations, which deal with responsibility for work safety in the mining sector.

The article is written correctly, although it is difficult to read due to the many abbreviations that are not first time expanded in the body text. Therefore, all abbreviations should be developed in the Abstract and the body text when first used.

Minor comments:

Line 41: This is where the ASM abbreviation for Artisanal and Small-scale Miners should appear for the first time.

The rows and columns in Table 1 are too tight and overlapping, making it difficult to guess which row and column the table cell belongs for.

Line 93: The use of (Pb) seems inappropriate at this point.

Lines 130-132: The sentence starting with 'The questionnaire, which is more like a pre-training / pre-workshop assessment identifies ...' seems to be understandable and should be reformulated.

Lines 141-142: The abbreviations USEPA and DEA should be developed for the first time here.

Line 173: The acronym UV-Vis should be expanded here for the first time, perhaps as UV-visible spectra.

Line 174: The term "d-d transition" needs to be clarified.

Characteristics of Respondents in section 4.1 do not exactly match the data in Figure 4.

Line 202: The first abbreviation ICPMS should be expanded here.

Line 238: The first abbreviation HI should be expanded here.

Author Response

See attached the cover letter and point-by-point response to reviewer's 3 comments, please.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 4 Report

General comment

This is an interesting work that portrays a facet of the barite mining sub-sector and its problems in Nigeria.

The manuscript as a whole has some coherence, although, in the introduction, the problem of chemical contamination may be further underlined.

The title does not seem the most appropriate either. It reflects more the bibliographic research than the research results, which focuses on demographic data and potential health problems originated from heavy metals contamination.

Specific comments

According to the journal's criteria, the number of words in the abstract must not exceed 200. So, authors must reduce the size of the abstract to meet this criterion.

-All acronyms must be defined in the abstract and manuscript text. and not only in figure and table captions

  Keywords: Mining survey - Never appears in the text. Consider using another keyword.

-Figure 1. – Something seems to be missing in the 1st text of the triangle (2007 Nigerian Minerals and…)

-Figure 1. - "etc." should not be used in scientific language.

Subsection 3.1. It is necessary to identify what is in the "safety mining kits”.

Subsection 3.2. must be given an indication of which Standards were used, which experimental procedures were used and which chemical elements were analyzed.

Figure 4. - The information in this figure is the same as that given in the text, so it is redundant. As a suggestion, the following alternatives are presented:

-Delete the figure

-Replace by two figures, one with the age distribution and the other with the academic background distribution.

Author Response

See attached the cover letter and point-by-point response to reviewer's 4 comments, please.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 4 Report

The authors responded satisfactorily to the raised questions.