This letter is a response to the comment submitted to chemosphere by Melleton et al. on our paper (Delplace et al., 2022), entitled "pedo-geochemical background and sediment contamination of metal(loid)s in the old mining-district of Salsigne (Orbiel valley, France)" by Gauthier Delplace, Jérôme Viers, Eva Schreck, Priscia Oliva and Philippe Behra (2022), published online in Chemosphere in September 2021.

Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.