The UK has recorded the world’s 1st foul air death or death legally certified to have been caused by air pollution…. According to WHO, air pollution contributes to 4.2 million deaths per year across the world. In addition to this, about 3.8 million deaths are due to household air pollutants.
DEATH
- An important inquest is underway in London to determine whether air pollution caused or contributed to the death in February 2013 of a nine-year-old child, Ella Adoo Kissi-Debrah, who lived with her mother near a busy road in London.
- Ella’s death could become possibly the first in the world to be legally certified as having been caused by “air pollution”.
Illness and death
- For three years before she died, Ella Adoo Kissi-Debrah had suffered seizures, and had made 27 visits to hospital after having problems breathing. She lived less than 30 metres from the South Circular, a busy and congested arterial road in Lewisham in southeast London.
- In 2014, an inquest focused on medical care provided to the child found she died of acute respiratory failure as a result of a severe asthma attack. In December 2019, her family was successful in their application to the High Court to reopen the inquest in the light of new evidence regarding air pollution levels.
The second inquest
- The full inquest that began on Monday will continue for approximately 10 days, and will consider whether air pollution caused or contributed to Ella’s death, and how pollution levels were monitored at the time.
- Issues such as steps taken to reduce air pollution, and information provided to the public about the levels, the dangers, and ways to reduce exposure, will also be taken up.
Significance of case
- If the campaign by the family is successful — Ella’s mother Rosamund, an important voice in the clean air movement, has set up The Ella Roberta Family Foundation to help improve the lives of children suffering from asthma — Ella will become the first person in the United Kingdom, and possibly in the world, to have air pollution recorded as the cause of death.
Killer air pollution
- According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), ambient air pollution causes 4.2 million deaths every year globally.
- Another 3.8 million deaths are caused by household exposure to dirty cookstoves and fuels. Ninety-one per cent of the world’s population lives in places where the air quality is worse than is recommended by WHO guidelines.
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