Dear Fellow Researchers,
I need your guidance to clarify questions a Reviewer has on estimating Ci in our binary mixture toxicity study.
Our Derivation of Ci: 1) For binary mixture, we ran separate Probit analysis for the organism’s response against each metal concentrations (C1 and C2) in the binary mixture (C1+C2). 2) We took Ci as the concentration of each metal in mixture where 50% response occurred in the Probit analysis. Reviewer says we are wrong! Hence recommended that manuscript be rejected!
Reviewer’s Suggestion on Ci: 1) Calculate concentration of binary mixture (Cmix) for the two different metals as Cmix = pi.Ci (metal 1) + pi.Ci (metal 2) where pi is proportion of each metal in the mixture. 2) Determine LC50 for Cmix. 3) Calculate the concentration of each metal (Ci) in the LC50mix.
Questions: Is it possible to combine the concentration of two different metals as a single mixture concentration?
To my knowledge, to describe mixtures of unidentical metals, one states each metal concentrations in the mixture e.g. Say we mix 2.5 ug Cd/L with 4.5 ug As/L, then one can state the binary mixture as 2.5/4.5 ug/L Cd-As or Cd/As mixture equals 2.5/4.5 ug/L. Many articles we cited gave the individual metals in the mixture separately as well and not as a combined single mixture concentration.
Could you please help clarify how possible to give a single mixture concentration for different metals?
Our calculations and that of the reviewer were both right. However, many published articles presented their calculations similar to ours i.e. as ratio of constituents in the mixture & not as a combined mixture concentration. See our recently published study in ACS ES&T.
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