LONDON (AP) — The British government has apologized for the death of a 9-year-old girl who is believed to be the first person in the U.K. to have air pollution listed on her death certificate, after a decade-long battle that highlighted the risks vehicle emissions pose to children in low-income communities.
The apology was part of a settlement announced Thursday in a lawsuit filed by the mother of Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, who developed severe asthma just before her 7th birthday and suffered severe seizures before she died on Feb. 15, 2013. The government also made an undisclosed financial settlement.
“Although this isn’t going to bring Ella back, we finally accept this is acknowledgement of what happened to her, and to put the issue of air pollution firmly on the map, that it’s a public health crisis ...
and something needs to be done about it,’’ Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah, Ella’s mother, said after meeting with government officials. “Today it is finally over, but I am going to continue, and I have been reassured by the government that they’re going to be continuing to work with me to clean up the air.” Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah fought to reopen the coroner’s inquest into Ella’s death after the so-called revealed how Volkswagen obscured the true level of emissions released by its diesel-powered vehicles.
Research by the Royal College of Physicians later showed that about 40,000 deaths can be attributed to outdoor air pollution each year in the U.K., wi.
