Mother of girl killed by air pollution wants memorial sculpture to absorb toxic traffic particles

The mother of the first person in the UK to have air pollution acknowledged as a cause of their death hopes to create a memorial sculpture for her daughter which absorbs toxic particles.

Ella Kissi-Debrah, who lived 25 metres from the South Circular Road in Lewisham, south London, was just nine years old when she died of an asthma attack in February 2013, having suffered dozens of acute seizures in the three years prior.

In a landmark decision in 2020 – following years of campaigning by Ella’s mother – a coroner ruled that dangerous exposure to air pollution had “made a material contribution” to her death.

Her mother, Rosamund Kissi-Debrah, who continues to campaign for reductions in air pollution levels, has recently started a fundraising effort to install a memorial sculpture in Lewisham’s Mountsfield Park, where Ella often played as a child.

The proposed sculpture would be made from a newly-developed material called NOXTEK, which absorbs nitrogen dioxide (NO2) – a pollutant often caused by traffic, to which the coroner said Ella had been exposed in excess of limits set by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The memorial would be created by artist and scientist, Dr Jasmine Pradissitto, a local Sydenham resident who has spent five years creating sculptures with the pollution-absorbing material after her son suffered a major asthma attack in 2017.

According to the fundraising page, the sculpture would be placed at eye-level in a field of wild meadow flowers, and would feature Ella’s sleeping face surrounded by flowing forms inspired by flight and nature – subjects she was passionate about as a child.

The memorial would be “a place in which we can remember her and her family, but also a space in which we look hopefully into a future in which clean air is recognised as the human right it is”, the campaign says.

The GoFundMe page has so far raised nearly £3,500 towards its £78,500 target.

“Whether it’s a school cake sale, or a sponsored scoot we’d be extremely grateful if people in south London wanted to get involved and help raise awareness of just how terrible air pollution is in this area, at the same time as raising funds for the sculpture,” Ms Kissi-Debrah said.

“We need to have more conversations about air pollution to help us understand how bad it is for our health.”

Meanwhile, nearly 10 months have passed since coroner Philip Barlow, who led the inquest into Ella’s death, said in his subsequent report that the UK should toughen national limits on levels of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) to prevent more deaths.

The government has promised to launch a consultation – which has not yet begun – on new legal targets for the air pollutant, with an aim to bring in new legislation by October.

Speaking to The Independent this week, Ella’s mother suggested that the government’s decision to launch a consultation was effectively kicking the matter “into the long grass”, adding: “I don’t believe that that’s dealing with the matter in hand.”

“I’m not sitting here saying these are easy issues,” Ms Kissi-Debrah said. “But what the coroner said is unless things change, children are going to continue to die.”

In 2019, Public Health England described air pollution as “the biggest environmental threat to health in the UK”, blaming long-term exposure to dirty air for between 28,000 to 36,000 deaths each year.

There is strong evidence that air pollution causes the development of coronary heart disease, stroke, respiratory disease and lung cancer, and exacerbates asthma, the now-defunct government health agency said.

According to King’s College London research, cited by mayor Sadiq Khan’s office, the number of people in the capital living in areas exceeding the legal limit for NO2 fell from more than two million in 2016 to 119,000 in 2019 – a reduction of 94 per cent.

Additional reporting by Cascade News