I’ve been loving my daughter’s lungs by fighting for clean air

Leah Ward lives in Birmingham with her four children, including Lucy, 6, who has asthma. In the last year she’s been campaigning for clean air in Birmingham and urging politicians to go further.

Both of my daughters have asthma but Lucy’s asthma is most severe. She started displaying symptoms at 18 months old and since then, she has been hospitalised 15 times, including six occasions where she was admitted to a ward. 

It is heart breaking and distressing to see your child in hospital, terrified and gasping for air, as the doctors fight against time to find a tiny vein to inject medication into.

Lucy’s condition has baffled many medical professionals, yet I think it’s the toxic levels of pollution in Birmingham that have put my 6-year-old daughter in hospital 15 times and left her fighting for breath.

During lockdown, when air pollution was much better, we were in hospital much less.

That’s why I’ve been helping Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation raise awareness of this invisible killer and campaigning for far more action where we live.  

We live in Selly Oak which falls outside of the Clean Air Zone in Birmingham that launched in June, but there is still a huge amount of traffic. The problem is particularly bad around Lucy’s primary school. I see parents pulling up in their cars right outside the school gates, engines idling, with little consideration.

Yet current clean air plans in Birmingham won’t cover where we live and protect Lucy from harm.

That’s why I think the current zone must be expanded to cover all pollution hotspots in the city. This will also help people feel safe to walk or cycle on Birmingham’s roads and not have to rely on their cars for the school run.

As family, we are keen cyclists, but the roads around Birmingham are so dangerous that we would not allow the children to cycle on them. These are changes politicians can put in place today.

Love your lungs by helping me and thousands of other campaigners fight for clean air today: Sign our petition

Asthma research is severely underfunded

DID YOU KNOW: Research into respiratory diseases like asthma accounts for just 2% of all the medical research funding in the UK.

This underfunding is exactly why we launched the 2021 Research Appeal...