Association between in situ ventilation and human-generated aerosol exposure in meatpacking plants during the COVID-19 pandemic

Joshua L. Santarpia; Josephine Lau; Debayan Shom; Shanna A. Ratnesar-Shumate; Eric C. Carnes; George W. Santarpia; Vicki L. Herrera; Danielle N. Rivera; Daniel N. Ackerman; Ashley R. Ravnholdt; John J. Lowe; Athena K. Ramos

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0314856

Peer Review History

Original SubmissionJuly 29, 2024
10 Sep 2024 Decision Letter - Rajeev Singh, Editor PONE-D-24-31372Association between in situ ventilation and human-generated aerosol exposure in meatpacking plants during the COVID-19 pandemicPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Santarpia, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Oct 25 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Rajeev Singh Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements. 1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf 2. Thank you for stating the following financial disclosure: Funding for this study was provided through private donations to the University of Nebraska Foundation. Please state what role the funders took in the study. If the funders had no role, please state: ""The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript."" If this statement is not correct you must amend it as needed. Please include this amended Role of Funder statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 3. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript: Funding for this study was provided through private donations to the University of Nebraska Foundation. The authors would like to thank additional members of the research team who assisted with onsite data collection activities, including Gabriel Lucero, Dr. Ryan Klataske, and Karen Schmeits. The team would also like to thank Dr. Shelly Miller for her guidance on the HVAC assessments. Many of the AirAnswers samplers used in this study were a gift from Inspirotec, LLC. We note that you have provided funding information that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. However, funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form. Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows: Funding for this study was provided through private donations to the University of Nebraska Foundation. Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 4. Thank you for stating the following in the Competing Interests section: Santarpia has been a paid consultant for both Inspirotec and Poppy Health, both of whom develop and provide indoor infectious disease and allergen air monitoring services and devices. All other authors report no conflict. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. Many of the AirAnswers samplers used in this study were a gift from Inspirotec, LLC. Please confirm that this does not alter your adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, by including the following statement: ""This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.” (as detailed online in our guide for authors http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/competing-interests). If there are restrictions on sharing of data and/or materials, please state these. Please note that we cannot proceed with consideration of your article until this information has been declared. Please include your updated Competing Interests statement in your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf. 5. We notice that your supplementary tables are included in the manuscript file. Please remove them and upload them with the file type 'Supporting Information'. Please ensure that each Supporting Information file has a legend listed in the manuscript after the references list. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ******** 2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: I Don't Know ****** 3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: No ****** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for this overall nicely written and relevant manuscript. I think it is an approach to discuss which working areas are most exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Find attached some general and specific comments: 1) As someone who has closely followed the outbreak events in meat plants, I realized that in my country meat factories are very heterogeneous depending on the focus. Your sample consists of three facilities from America and I also had the feeling that the plants there are very heterogeneous. Is it possible to generalize the results in this way? 2) Data availability & Methods & Statistical part - you are reporting a lot of parameter like mean, standard deviation, correlation (,etc.?) and for me it was unclear how you calculated these estimates. Could you explain this in more detail in the methods section? Otherwise I can't judge whether you have really disclosed all the data, especially for the mean values. 3) Could you provide more information about the measurements of each of the tests in the methods section? How and when were the measurements carried out? Were all measurements long-term measurements or were individual measurements only carried out once. This would have to be specified here. Were all measurements in real life situations or were some measurements in empty rooms? 4) Something went wrong with the tables and there are two different tables 1. Formatting is also different here. This made it really difficult to follow the text. Table numbering (from Table 4 onwards) is therefore incorrect. 5) In the part "Assay of Samples" I have the impression that methods are here in the result section. Unfortunately, I cannot really assess the results here and if results are presented in this way, the comment can be ignored. 6) I would structure the discussion differently. First summarize the most important results and then in the strengths section you can go into why the study is special. You can also take a look at the recommedations in the strobe statement (https://www.strobe-statement.org/). 7) Source 19 looks a bit strange (Herstein J, SM, LA, DE, RA, GB, B-MD, KC, LJ, & LJ.). Overall, the bibliography should be standardized again. ****** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r001
Revision 1
17 Oct 2024 Author Response Response to Reviewers We appreciate the time and effort by the reviewer to provide comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment and have provided a point-by-point response (in red) to each comment. We have also included a track changes version of manuscript, along with the clean version. Reviewer #1: Thank you for this overall nicely written and relevant manuscript. I think it is an approach to discuss which working areas are most exposed to SARS-CoV-2. Find attached some general and specific comments: 1) As someone who has closely followed the outbreak events in meat plants, I realized that in my country meat factories are very heterogeneous depending on the focus. Your sample consists of three facilities from America and I also had the feeling that the plants there are very heterogeneous. Is it possible to generalize the results in this way? The reviewer raises an important point regarding the heterogeneity of the meatpacking facilities worldwide. As described in the manuscript, Sites A and C were similar in size, scale and ventilation, while Site B was significantly newer, processed a different protein (poultry, rather than beef) and had much different work practices. The conclusions regarding increased airflow minimizing exposure to human-generated aerosol were generated by synthesizing the data from all 3 facilities. The conclusion that under ventilated spaces represent a greater risk of exposure is not unique to this study, but the data gathered here strongly support that increasing ventilation reduces the exposure to human-generated aerosols that may transmit disease. 2) Data availability & Methods & Statistical part - you are reporting a lot of parameter like mean, standard deviation, correlation (,etc.?) and for me it was unclear how you calculated these estimates. Could you explain this in more detail in the methods section? Otherwise I can't judge whether you have really disclosed all the data, especially for the mean values. We originally assumed that the calculated means and standard deviations were sufficient in our data disclosure. Based on the reviewers comments, we are now posting all raw data to the following data repository: Santarpia, Joshua, 2024, "Replication Data for: Association between in situ ventilation and human-generated aerosol exposure in meatpacking plants during the COVID-19 pandemic", https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/J6BQES, Harvard Dataverse 3) Could you provide more information about the measurements of each of the tests in the methods section? How and when were the measurements carried out? Were all measurements long-term measurements or were individual measurements only carried out once. This would have to be specified here. Were all measurements in real life situations or were some measurements in empty rooms? Due to the release of higher concentrations of CO2 in Test 1, the test was carried out during no occupancy. Tests 2, 3, 4 and 5 were carried out during normal work, when the spaces were occupied. Test 5, in particular, was carried out during periods of maximum occupancy (page 10 in the test 5 description). Test 1 was performed according to a standard method (ASTM D6245), Test 2 was calculated based on 5 successive measurements (as described in the text, Page 8). As described in the text, the ventilation for Test 3 was calculated based on measurements over 5 consecutive days. The number of individual samples for Tests 4 and 5 are described in Table 2, as well as in Table 5 and all supplemental tables. Test 4 was the only multi-day measurement, where single samples were collected over periods of several days (as described in the text). For tests 3 and 5, short duration measurements were made repeatedly over several days. The descriptions of the tests have been updated (where not explicitly stated) to reflect the above description. 4) Something went wrong with the tables and there are two different tables 1. Formatting is also different here. This made it really difficult to follow the text. Table numbering (from Table 4 onwards) is therefore incorrect. We appreciate the reviewer identifying this issue. The original manuscript version had many tables in the text that were moved to the supplement during editing. There were some residual incorrect figure references, as well as misnumbered tables that we did not catch prior to submission. The tables have now been correctly numbered and referenced in the text. 5) In the part "Assay of Samples" I have the impression that methods are here in the result section. Unfortunately, I cannot really assess the results here and if results are presented in this way, the comment can be ignored. The “Assay of Samples” is a subsection of the Methods. It describes, in detail, how each of the samples collected in the preliminary study of Site A and Tests 4 and 5 were assayed for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and SFTPC, how the copy number is calculated from the raw Ct value, and how the copy number is converted to relevant environmental concentration units, based on how each sample was collected. The resulting calculated data is presented in the Tables and Figures in the text and supplement. 6) I would structure the discussion differently. First summarize the most important results and then in the strengths section you can go into why the study is special. You can also take a look at the recommendations in the strobe statement (https://www.strobe-statement.org/). We have worked to restructure the discussion section according to the reviewer’s recommendations. 7) Source 19 looks a bit strange (Herstein J, SM, LA, DE, RA, GB, B-MD, KC, LJ, & LJ.). Overall, the bibliography should be standardized again. We thank the reviewer for catching this error. There were some import errors in the reference manager software, which we have now corrected. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers_final.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r002
15 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Rajeev Singh, Editor PONE-D-24-31372R1Association between in situ ventilation and human-generated aerosol exposure in meatpacking plants during the COVID-19 pandemicPLOS ONE Dear Dr. Santarpia, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. Please submit your revised manuscript by Dec 30 2024 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols. We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Rajeev Singh Academic Editor PLOS ONE Journal Requirements: Please review your reference list to ensure that it is complete and correct. If you have cited papers that have been retracted, please include the rationale for doing so in the manuscript text, or remove these references and replace them with relevant current references. Any changes to the reference list should be mentioned in the rebuttal letter that accompanies your revised manuscript. If you need to cite a retracted article, indicate the article’s retracted status in the References list and also include a citation and full reference for the retraction notice. [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed ******** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes ****** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: Thank you for incorporating my comments. I have to ask again about point two. Could you include which software was used to perform the calculations? If all the calculations have already been done by the measuring devices, the description of how the tables and figures were created is also sufficient. Finally, I can only find one error in Table 6, where the table labeling is strange. ****** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No ******** [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r003
Revision 2
17 Nov 2024 Author Response Response to Reviewers We appreciate the time and effort by the reviewer to provide comments on our manuscript. We have carefully considered each comment and have provided a point-by-point response (in red) to each comment. We have also included a track changes version of manuscript, along with the clean version. Reviewer #1: Thank you for incorporating my comments. I have to ask again about point two. Could you include which software was used to perform the calculations? If all the calculations have already been done by the measuring devices, the description of how the tables and figures were created is also sufficient. Finally, I can only find one error in Table 6, where the table labeling is strange. We appreciate the reviewers clarification of their previous comment. In response, we have added a short section at the end of the methods section entitled “Data tabulation and Analysis”, which addresses which software packages were utilized, and in what way for the analysis of the data. We have attempted to clarify the titles in Table 6 to ensure that they are clear. Attachments Attachment Submitted filename: Response to Reviewersv2_final.docx https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r004
19 Nov 2024 Decision Letter - Rajeev Singh, Editor Association between in situ ventilation and human-generated aerosol exposure in meatpacking plants during the COVID-19 pandemic PONE-D-24-31372R2 Dear Dr. Santarpia, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice will be generated when your article is formally accepted. Please note, if your institution has a publishing partnership with PLOS and your article meets the relevant criteria, all or part of your publication costs will be covered. Please make sure your user information is up-to-date by logging into Editorial Manager at Editorial Manager® and clicking the ‘Update My Information' link at the top of the page. If you have any questions relating to publication charges, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Rajeev Singh Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r005
Formally Accepted
22 Nov 2024 Acceptance Letter - Rajeev Singh, Editor PONE-D-24-31372R2 PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Santarpia, I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team. At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following: * All references, tables, and figures are properly cited * All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission, * There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps. Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Rajeev Singh Academic Editor PLOS ONE https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0314856.r006

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