Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah: 'We want to breathe easier'

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah was just nine when she died in 2013.

Yesterday a Coroner's Court found that air pollution "made a material contribution" to her death. Ella, who had asthma, lived close to one of London's busiest roads.

It's the first time that verdict had been recorded on a death certificate in the UK.

Now a group of teenagers are using Ella's death to campaign against the toxic fumes that helped to kill her.

Destiny Boka Batesa says she's worried about her little sister's asthma

Destiny has lived with her family in South London her whole life.

"If I could, I wouldn't live where I am now" she tells Radio 1 Newsbeat.

The 17-year-old is one of the founders of "Choked Up", a group of - as they describe themselves - brown and black teenagers who want the right to breathe clean air to be made law.

She says she grew up with pollution - "seeing the cars in the morning, ice cream vans right outside your school without their engines off" and it made her feel "helpless".

Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah lived just 25 metres from South Circular Road in Lewisham. She was admitted to hospital 27 times in the three years before she died.

'It's always having that anxiety'

Destiny also has a younger sister who, like Ella, has asthma.

"The attacks come at you fast and in really unprovoked situations. You don't know whether to just break down because you're supposed to be the stronger sibling.

"To see her go through that was something that hugely worries me.

"Seeing her struggle to breathe, you could actually hear it, the whistling that came out of her breathing. I've always having that anxiety, you don't know when the next attack's going to happen."

It's this sense of helplessness - she says - that has turned her to campaigning.

"When you finally talk about all the factors that surround [air pollution], you realise that there are 101 measures that could have been implemented to save Ella and all the other Ella's who live in the UK."

What she wants in her own words is "the right to breathe easier."

Anjali Raman Middleton grew up with Ella Kissi-Debrah and is the co-founder of Choked Up

Anjali grew up in the same neighbourhood as Ella and they went to the same primary school.

"I had seen her a week before and she had been completely normal and completely fine. I knew she had asthma but at that age it was just a pump, it was nothing that meant you would die."

The dangers of air pollution were mostly unknown by Ella and her friends.

"People would live by really busy roads like south circular and never think twice about the air they were breathing. It was the backdrop to real life."

• Pollution a factor in girl's death, inquest finds

• Girl with asthma 'living on knife edge' before death

• 'Did air pollution kill my daughter?'

But since her friend's death she wants to improve the lives of people of colour, who she says "are more likely to live in polluted areas."

"I don't what I'd be feeling if I was the mother of a child in a highly polluted area. I would be feeling terrified. I don't know what affect that is having on the development of that child."

Anjali's relationship with Ella's mum Rosie has "really helped me learned about air pollution and the inequality surrounding it"

What she wants now is "the Government to acknowledge that deaths and ill health has been caused by air pollution."

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