General comments:

The paper presents an approach to estimate the LDSA dose with and without coagulation considered during decay phases. While the paper is interesting and of utility for the IAQ research community, it requires considerable improvement on technical and writing fronts.

Most of the sentences used in different sections are redundantly lengthy and can be made crisp. The paper seems well-connected, but it is not easy to read and can be improved substantially. Some critical details about the study are missing. For example, more details about the activity time diary, the number of times the cooking was done, and the number of occupants should have been explicitly mentioned. A few of the numbers and sentences were arbitrarily mentioned and should be justified with references.

Some specific comments are as follows.

Specific comments:

Line 30: The Sentence may be reframed for more clarity.

Line 43: Since the exposure represents the area under the cocn. Vs time curve, it is well understood and documented that decay phases may dominate the overall exposure.

Lines 45- 50: More recent references should also be included

Line 120: The use of β(LDSA) to replace the (vA/V) should be justified, as the deposition velocity will depend on the particle size

Line 120-125: The reason somehow does not support the replacement of the use of other metrics than the deposition coefficient

In equations 1, 3, and 4, subscripts must be used to indicate that the material balance corresponds to specific processes.

Equation 5: Some of the terms from Eq.1 are missing in Eq. 5.

Line 134: Looking at Eq (6) should be ‘Looking at Eq (7)’

Line 139: What is the difference between initial and background concentration? Are they the same, or is the initial concentration the one that is at the start of the decay phase?

Line 147-149: The monodisperse assumption seems crude, considering that coagulation physics is well understood. Any background checks were performed before assuming that the studied aerosols are equal in size, at least GSD could have been calculated to know the polydisperse nature and how far this assumption would hold?

Line 153: “and −1, that is the change of particle number when two particles collide and adhere forming larger particle.” is a wrong statement. The negative sign indicates that the number conc. is reducing with time.

Equation 10: The equation seems dimensionally inconsistent if LDSA and N are concentrations as in the previous text. Please clarify.

Line 164: Please quantify ‘reasonable accuracy’. Also, what about PM not lying in 30-300 nm range?

Table 1: The mentioned floor area is of the entire apartment or just the kitchen.

Table 1. Further, it would be good to mention what type of ventilation was there in the kitchen

Line 227-229: It would be for a specific set of aerosols; the results can vary for different emission sources. Therefore, it would be good to mention more details about these comparative studies.

Line 238-239: What was the number of occupants in each of these dwellings? The person carrying the backpack was moving in which direction and to which room. Brief details needed

Line 248: Given the quantity of oil relative to the chicken, the frying mode of cooking seems to be implausible. Maybe ‘pan frying’ or something more appropriate.

Line 254: Please briefly describe the movement of the cook or occupant? Also, was there any activity diary maintained in each of the cases

Figure 2: What is the reason for the higher standard deviation in LDSA in case 1? Why is there such a difference in values between case 2 and case 4? Both are spacious apartments per floor area in Table 1.

Figure 2: Apart from case 1, for the rest of the cases, I think the same y scale could be done, so that the subplots are easier to compare.

Line 272: I think as the cooking time varies, the peak concentration might depend on that too, so cooking time should be mentioned in Table 1.

Line 303: A comment about internal mixing characteristics, such as fan or recirculation, would be helpful for readers.

Line 310-311: Explain in brief. The algorithm used and the type of fitting done.

Line 312: What is the frequency of data logging in these instruments, and did you do any other averaging other than that 5-minute one?

Line 350: How can both be compared, as both of them have different units!

Line 360: Case 1 had a higher concentration and no ventilation, so the decay period should have been greater than in the other cases. Was the surface-to-volume ratio high here? Please explain.

Line 394-395: Is there a way to see the difference between exposure across all the periods?

Line 405: Formatting/grammatical error

Line 418: Where did the 21 hr 26 min come from?