I recently read the paper “Association between COVID-19 and Heavy Metal Pollution in Iraqi Cities Determined from Hierarchical Prediction” by Aram Mohammed Raheem in the November Environmental & Engineering Geoscience issue. It appears to me that the approach used has two fatal flaws (items one and two below) and two major concerns (items three and four) and that the conclusions are not supported by the data. I describe my concerns below, keeping in mind the stated conclusion:
Beyond the inappropriateness of using contamination data from specific industrial sites to draw conclusions about entire counties, the use of the data sums...
You do not have access to this content, please speak to your institutional administrator if you feel you should have access.
