The deadly effects of air pollution are personal for one Hither Green mum who says her nine-year-old daughter's death from severe asthma was triggered by smog.

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debra stood as the Green candidate in last week's Lewisham East by-election and had more reason than most for the environment to be an issue very close to her heart.

Her daughter Ella Kissi-Debrah died in February 2013 following years of coughing fits and seizures.

Speaking on what would have been Ella’s 14th birthday, Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debra said there was “no information” about the links between smog and asthma when her daughter was ill.

“To environment scientists it was not new but it was new to us parents,” she said.

“Can you imagine if there was this PR around [air pollution] then? I think we would have twigged very quickly.”

Research from Goldsmiths, University of London showed in 2017 levels of pollution in New Cross and Deptford were up to six times higher than World Health Organisation guidelines.

The South Circular Road was one of the worst roads in Lewisham for pollution levels along with the Catford area – pollution which Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debra says contributed to her daughter’s death.

“It was the pollution in Lewisham. Apart from a few family holidays she was never really out of the borough,” she said. 

An inquest into the “incredibly healthy” Holbeach primary pupil’s death found she had died from acute respiratory failure but did not establish the cause of her asthma.

But Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debra, who has previously called for a second inquest into her daughter’s death following more information about the capital’s pollution levels, believes there is a link between air pollution and her daughter’s asthma.

“She had what we thought at the time was a cold, but it turned out to be one of the worst cases of asthma ever recorded,” she said.

Ms Adoo-Kissi-Debra, who finished fourth in the election, advised parents concerned about pollution levels in the borough to lobby their MP and the government to act.