• In 2019, 500,000 newborns died from pollution

  • Smog, in Milan children with eye disorders boom: for doctors it is pollution conjunctivitis

  • The UN alarm: a quarter of deaths and diseases in the world from pollution

  • Smog, Legambiente: fewer cars and a national plan against pollution

Share

December 16, 2020 British justice has for the first time recognized the role of air pollution in death, stating in a long-awaited ruling that smog made a "material contribution" to the death of a nine-year-old girl in London.



"My conclusion is that air pollution was a material contribution to Ella's death" Adoo-Kissi-Debrah in 2013, London Borough of Southwark deputy coroner Philip Barlow announced after two weeks of hearings. Barlow said Ella Kissi-Debrah's death in February 2013 was caused by acute respiratory failure, severe asthma, and exposure to air pollution. The deputy coroner explained that the child was exposed to nitrogen dioxide and particulate pollution in excess of the guidelines of the World Health Organization (WHO), the main source of which is traffic emissions.



The coroner said failing to reduce pollution levels to authorized limits may have contributed to her death, as well as failing to provide her mother with information on the potential aggravating consequences of air pollution on asthma.



"She lived near highly polluting roads. I have no difficulty in concluding that her personal exposure to nitrogen dioxide and particulate matter was very high," said Barlown quoted by the Guardian, adding that the health effects of smog are have been known for many years and that children, especially asthmatics, are particularly at risk.



The ruling is the first of its kind in the UK and is likely to increase pressure on the government to tackle illegal smog levels in the UK.



Ella's mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, a former teacher, has spent years struggling to have her daughter examined by a second medical examiner. Her persistence paid off when Barlow agreed with medical evidence provided by the family that Ella's particular form of acute asthma was aggravated by pollution.



Kissi-Debrah's lawyers said air pollution is a public health emergency and that it is urgently needed to register it as a cause of death to ensure public health programs to tackle toxic air are a priority.



She lived with her family, of African roots, in the south-east suburb of London, less than 30 meters from the South Circular, a busy and regularly congested road.

She died after being hospitalized 27 times in 3 years.

The parents told investigators that they had never been made aware of the dangers posed by pollution to the child's health.

She died on February 15, 2013 after a severe asthma crisis, at the height of her ordeal.