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paulddraper

I don't know how this normally works.

But isn't "air pollution" an overly ambiguous cause of death?

Could be lung cancer, injury, asphyxiation, etc.

It seems a bit like listing "sugar" as the cause of death.

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From the article: “Ella lived near a busy street where pollution levels were consistently recorded at above the legal limit between 2010 and her death in 2013.”

It seems there was legislation, enacted to protect people, that was ignored for years. The child’s death was not of their own doing, so I’m not sure why folks are even mentioning sugar or cheeseburgers.

Well, if it is confirmed that it had a decisive role in this unfortunate event, I guess it would be fair to say that air pollution is one of the primary causes of the development of the subsequent ailments she went through, which ultimately lead her to her death. If removing air pollution from the equation would have saved her life, I think it's reasonable to say that it was, if not the sole cause of her death, one of the causes.

Asthma was her cause of death. It may be due to a genetic disorder, a disease, or some other cause. But air pollution was not definitively shown to be the cause of her death. This is a political move committed by Stephen Holgate, the former chair of the U.K. government's advisory committee on air pollution. The article pretty much spells that out.

Sounds like politicians are trying to cover their asses after an entirely preventable (under their own legislation) death

So are Pepsi or hamburgers listed as a cause of death when someone dies of a heart attack due to obesity? Calling air pollution a cause of death is a stretch.

Pepsi and hamburgers are not shared resources. Air is.

Asthma is induced by both genetic and environmental factors. [0] So air pollution causing asthma is hardly a stretch. Especially if you've been exposed 1/3 of your life at such a young age. She was 9 years old. Having developed lungs and going into that area is majorly different than developing lungs in that area.

[0] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21799018

No.

Example: If a person made to ingest something that leads to immediate cardiac or respiratory failure we call it "poisoned to death".

Same for "being stabbed" rather than "cardiac failure due to blood loss"

But she lived in that street for years. Just like someone might have eaten cheeseburgers for years and died of a heart attack. You don’t say that someone died from chronic cheeseburger ingestion.

Not being snarky, but perhaps we should. It wouldn't be untrue. When people drink their livers to death we often say they died of alcohol abuse even if we note they died of liver failure - seems reasonable if someone ate tons of cheeseburgers we could say they died of cheeseburger abuse etc.

It's a bit dramatic, but could also be useful?

I'm definitely in agreement that we should say people died from alcohol overdose at least, maybe then people will take it seriously,

There weren’t legal limits on cheeseburger ingestion, like their was for air pollution. This death was preventable, and not the child’s fault.

Those are causes of death.

ICD-10 has X85 "Assault by drugs, medicaments and biological substances" and X99 "Assault by sharp object". [1]

But it is unprecedented (AFAIK) to specify an external cause that is so far removed from the point of death.

E.g. assuredly people have died from the long-term effects of tanning, but "sun tan" is not considered to be a cause of a death.

[1] http://apps.who.int/classifications/apps/icd/icd10online2005...

British law is not medical coding. Misadventure isn't a medical code and could cover many of the bizarre ones like whale ingestion.

OK, what about lead poisoning? An environmental hazard, especially effects children, preventable, mostly affects poor folks and developing nations. This seems like it's pretty analogous.

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