Fog, possibly due to pollution, covered London in May 2018. -

Richard Gardner / Shutter / SIPA

Air pollution was "a material contribution" in the death of a nine-year-old girl in London, said the British justice for the first time on Tuesday in a long-awaited decision.

"My conclusion is that air pollution was a material contribution to Ella's death" Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2013, said London Borough of Southwark deputy medical examiner Philip Barlow after two weeks of hearings that ended on Friday.

Repeated asthma attacks

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah died on February 15, 2013 of a serious asthma attack after nearly three years of repeated attacks and around thirty hospitalizations related to this disease.

She lived in Lewisham, less than 30 yards from the South Circular, a busy route in South London.

In 2014, justice determined that she died of acute respiratory failure caused by severe asthma, not pollution.

But those findings were overturned in 2019, and a new round of hearings ordered due to new scientific evidence, including the report by UK air pollution expert Stephen Holgate in 2018.

A link between hospitalizations and pollution peaks

Stephen Holgate had noted a "striking link" between Ella's emergency hospitalizations and recorded peaks of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and airborne particles, the most harmful pollutants, near her home.

“Ella lived on a razor's edge.

This means that a very small change can have dramatic consequences ”, explained during a hearing on December 8 this professor in immunopharmacology at the University of Southampton.

Between 28,000 and 36,000 deaths occurring in the UK each year are estimated to be linked to air pollution.

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