British Forensic Medicine: London air pollution behind Ella's death

A British forensic assistant determined, for the first time, that a person had died from air pollution.

Ella Casey-Debrah died at the age of nine in 2013 after suffering a fatal asthma attack.

Her mother, Rosemond Casey-Dibrah, has long campaigned to recognize pollution as the reason behind her daughter's death after new evidence emerged of dangerous levels of pollution in the air near her home, which was located 25 meters off South Circular Road in Lewisham, southeast London, in 2018.

A previous investigation had said in 2014 that she had died from "acute respiratory failure".

Four years later, after the new evidence was published, a Supreme Court overturned the ruling and allowed a new investigation this year.

According to the Press Association, assistant forensic pathologist Philip Barlow said, "It will be my decision that Ella died of an asthma attack in which exposure to excessive air pollution contributed to."

He said that before Ella's death in 2013, she was exposed to "levels of nitrogen dioxide and fine particles in excess of global health guidelines," which "the main source of exposure to it was vehicle exhaust emissions."

"Ella's mother was not informed of the health risks of air pollution and its potential to increase asthma," Barlow added.

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