Mother calls on Attorney General to overturn air pollution death inquest

The mother of a child who died from respiratory failure has delivered a 100,000 signature petition to have the inquest into her death reopened after new evidence emerged that illegal levels of air pollution may have contributed to her death.

Ella Kissi-Debrah died in February 2013 at the age of nine after experiencing three years of seizures. The original inquest, which published its findings in September 2014, concluded that Ella had died as the result of acute respiratory failure and severe asthma.

However, a later report by a leading expert on asthma and air pollution, Prof Stephen Holgate, said there was a "striking association" between Ella's emergency hospital admissions and spikes in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and PM10s, the most noxious pollutants. His report said there was a "real prospect that without unlawful levels of air pollution, Ella would not have died". Ella lived 25m from the busy South Circular Road in Lewisham during a time that local air pollution levels breached EU legal limits.

Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, wants the original findings quashed and a new inquest held. He told the BBC: "What I am trying to do is what every parent would do in my situation, which is simply to get to the truth about why my beautiful daughter and the twins' big sister is no longer with us.

"I would like whatever contributed to her death to be officially recognised on her death certificate. Ella suffered greatly in the last year of her life and it is right that this should be reflected."

To date, no individual’s death has been officially directly linked to air pollution.