- Air pollution was the cause of the death of 9-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah, a British forensic scientist decided on Wednesday.
- He died of an asthma attack in 2013.
- This is the first time air pollution has been listed on a death certificate.
- Emissions of nitrogen dioxide and harmful particles from the air where Kissi-Debrah lived exceeded legal limits. These pollutants can exacerbate asthma.
- Go to the Business Insider homepage for more stories.
Seven years after 9-year-old Ella Kissi-Debrah from London suffered a fatal asthma attack, her death makes history.
On Wednesday, coroner Philip Barlow ruled that air pollution killed the girl.
“Her death certificate will now become the first in the world to list air pollution as a cause of death.” The British Lung Foundation posted on Twitter.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan called her a “Landmark moment”.
Kissi-Debrah’s mother, Rosamund, fought a long battle to get justice for her daughter and highlight the issue of air pollution in Britain. In 2014, experts determined that Ella died of acute respiratory failure. But Rosamund called for another investigation into her child’s death, and her lawyers provided evidence that the family’s levels of air pollution exceeded the limits set by the European Union. They maintained that this pollution played a role in Ella’s fatal health problems.
The coroner agreed: Barlow intends to list acute respiratory failure, severe asthma and exposure to air pollution as its causes of death, PA Media reported.
“Air pollution was a significant factor that contributed to both inducing and exacerbating her asthma,” Barlow said at the end of the investigation, according to CNN. He mentioned the evacuation of cars and trucks as the main source of pollutants.
Seizures, hospital visits and disabling health problems
Ella’s mother, Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, poses before the opening of the coroner’s investigation in London, November 30, 2020.
Hollie Adams / AFP through Getty
When Ella was six, Rosamund took her to the hospital during a cough. The doctors had to put Ella in a medically induced coma for three days. For the next three years, Ella visited the hospital 26 more times for acute asthma and seizures.
Rosamund said her daughter had been disabled until 2012 and had to be worn in a piggyback style to get around, the BBC reported. Ella died on February 5, 2013.
According to Stephen Holgate, a respiratory doctor at Southampton General Hospital, the girl’s asthma episodes were more severe in the winter, when pollution levels rose near her home on South Circular Road – one of the busiest roads in the south. London.
He told Southwark Coroner’s Court, which oversaw the investigation into Ella’s death, that the cumulative effect of continuous breathing of toxic air caused her to have a fatal asthma attack, the Guardian reported.
“Illegal levels of air pollution”
A woman is wearing a mask in a smog-covered city.
d3sign / Getty Images
In a 2018 report, Holgate found that air pollution levels at a monitoring station one mile from the house of Kissi-Debrah consistently exceeded the legal limits set by the European Union and the World Health Organization between 2010 and 2013. .
Holgate’s report said “without illegal air pollution, Ella would not have died.”
This finding informed Barlow’s assessment, CNN reported.
“During her illness, between 2010 and 2013, she was exposed to levels of nitrogen dioxide and particles that exceed WHO guidelines,” Barlow concluded, according to CNN.
He added that the failure to achieve these levels below legal limits in the three years before Kissi-Debrah’s fatal asthma attack could have contributed to her death.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan posted on Twitter Barlow’s decision should be “a turning point” in the city’s pressure to reduce emissions, adding that “toxic air pollution is a public health crisis”.
Air pollution kills 8.8 million people a year
Trucks and cars travel on the Cross Bronx Highway on May 25, 2017 in the Bronx, New York. The highway is one of the busiest in the country, and the neighborhoods above it have very high levels of asthma in their communities.
Andrew Lichtenstein / Corbis via Getty Images
Gas plants and vehicles produce air pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and hydrocarbons. These chemicals can react with sunlight to create smog, which lowers air quality to unhealthy levels.
Kissi-Debrah is not the first person to die from air pollution – it causes about 8.8 million deaths annually worldwide. A study has shown that almost 800,000 Europeans died due to air pollution problems in 2015 alone.
Since last year, 91% of the world’s population has lived in places where air quality does not meet WHO safety standards.
Studies in China and Canada show that children who breathe poor air are more likely to have difficulty breathing and asthma. A study involving New York schoolchildren also found that children who breathe unhealthy air are more likely to need academic intervention.
Research in the United States shows that dementia and cognitive decline rates are higher in places with more air pollution.
A mother helps her son use an inhaler.
REUTERS / Lindsey Wasson
Most air pollution comes in the form of methane and carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal, oil and natural gas. These fossil fuels can also emit pollutants such as benzene, a chemical related to leukemia and childhood blood disorders, and formaldehyde, which is carcinogenic.
When sunlight interacts with pollutants, chemical reactions can create ground-level ozone, a type of ozone that can trigger a variety of breathing problems, especially for children and the elderly, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Ozone respiration at ground level can reduce a person’s lung function and damage lung tissue, exacerbating conditions such as emphysema and asthma.