Use cases
ULAB Plume is being developed to support four primary use cases. Detailed writeups for each are being prepared and will be published here shortly.
Regulatory compliance screening
Once the data-gap collection protocol is in place and the tool is validated against case-study field tests (target 2028), ULAB Plume's primary intended use is regulatory-grade screening — assessing whether a specific ULAB smelter's modelled plume meets local ambient air quality and deposition standards. This is the same role AERMOD has played in US regulatory enforcement for the past 20 years.
Retrospective health-burden estimation
For known historical or operating smelters, ULAB Plume can model the spatial extent of cumulative lead deposition and the resulting child blood-lead increment in surrounding communities — supporting site-specific health-burden estimates that may help motivate remediation funding or policy interventions. This use case carries larger biokinetic uncertainty than the regulatory-compliance use case (see the methodology), but does not require the same input-data fidelity to be informative.
Advocacy and public-health communication
Even at its current illustrative-only stage, ULAB Plume can support advocacy by visualising the spatial reach of lead pollution from a hypothetical or actual smelter — making the public-health case for cleaner ULAB recycling concrete and locally specific.
Education
The current illustrative-only stage is also useful for informing how different parameters (e.g. stack height, particle size distribution, climate, number of operational years etc.) influence how pollution is dispersed, lead exposure pathways, the size of the population exposed, and the potential resulting health burden.
For collaboration on these use cases, contact chrisk@pureearth.org.