It is one year since Coroner Philip Barlow published the Prevention of Future Deaths Report following the landmark ruling that air pollution contributed to 9 year-old Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah’s death from severe asthma.
The PFD Report recommended three key areas of focus: the implementation of legal air pollution limits based on WHO guidelines, a public awareness campaign on the dangers of air pollution to human health, and greater awareness and education of the medical community on the dangers of air pollution to patients.
A year later, little has changed to prevent future deaths like Ella’s. DEFRA is now carrying out a public consultation on UK air quality targets. However, it proposes to meet the WHO’s older 2005 guidelines by 2040, rather than the WHO’s 2021 guidelines based on the latest science on protecting public health.
The Ella Roberta Family Foundation and Hodge Jones & Allen held a press conference in London with four leading experts , including Sir Stephen Holgate and Professor Frank Kelly on air pollution and its danger to human health, where they discussed advocacy, achievability, and accountability in the fight against air pollution and asthma.
You can read more in the DailyMail Online.
