My fears for pupils who walk busy road each day
DUE to the determination and perseverance of her mother, Ella AdooKissi-Debrah - the nine-year-old girl who lived near the South Circular Road in Lewisham and who died in 2013 following an asthma attack has, at last, had her death recorded as being due to air pollution (the socalled “silent killer” indeed).
This recording of the cause of death is unprecedented and very significant and sends a clear message and a stark warning to all local authorities that they should provide the shortest, quickest, safest and healthiest routes for children walking to school.
This applies to our city mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby, and all those city councillors who have run the council for several years.
I write specifically with regard to the children from Leicester and a few nearby villages who walk along the city section of Greengate Lane to attend a secondary school in Birstall.
Due to there being no continuous footpath on either side of that section of road, children have to cross the road twice in the morning rushhour, dodging fast-moving vehicles and breathing in extra air pollution.
The bodies of children are still developing and are very vulnerable to being adversely affected by air pollution – particularly the awful nitrous oxide among other pollutants.
When a child starts at secondary school at 11 and continues to 16 at least, they are thus walking along Greengate Lane for five years and, assuming no days absent from school, about 200 times each year, a total of about 1,000 times in five years during the morning rush-hour and another 1,000 times in afternoons going home.
That means the number of crossings made to reach a footpath are double those times: which could be about 4,000 crossings in five years.
There seems no doubt that at least some children over the years have been adversely affected by breathing in large amounts of air pollution with nasty implications for their future health.
I had a letter published about three years ago pointing out this very unsatisfactory situation but since then the city council has done nothing to make things better.
Meanwhile it has spent millions on altering roads, improving/widening footpaths in the city centre –