NEW YORK (AP) -- The lung disease that killed a police detective who toiled for weeks at ground zero was caused by injecting ground-up pills, not by toxic dust from the World Trade Center, the city medical examiner's office confirmed Thursday.
Chief Medical Examiner Charles Hirsch's ruling outraged the family of 34-year-old James Zadroga, who became a national symbol of post-Sept. 11 illness after his death last year.
The family released over 100 pages of medical records that showed that Zadroga developed breathing problems just after the 2001 attacks. Zadroga's father said the medicine his son was taking to treat his illness -- including several strong painkillers and anti-anxiety pills -- were never improperly injected.
"The cause of his death was dust inhaled at ground zero,'' said Dr. Michael Baden, a pathologist who reviewed Zadroga's case for the family.
A New Jersey medical examiner had already made that ruling in Zadroga's case, after his death in January 2006 of respiratory failure and inflammation of the lungs. Zadroga's family went to the New York City medical examiner to get the officer added to the official Sept. 11 victims' list.
Hirsch concluded that Zadroga was taking pills that were ground up and injected into his bloodstream, leaving traces of the pills in his lung tissue, Hirsch spokeswoman Ellen Borakove said.
"It is our opinion that that material entered his body via the bloodstream and not via the airways,'' she said.
Hirsch explained his findings to the family in a meeting last week in which he told his parents that Zadroga was a drug abuser, according to the family's lawyer.
"He said that: 'Your son abused drugs,''' said Zadroga's attorney, Michael Barasch said, adding the meeting "wasn't really combative, but it was icy cold.''
Borakove said that Hirsch found the materials talc and cellulose, which are often the binding agents in pills and capsules, deep in the lung tissue. Several other doctors have told said that talc and cellulose are often byproducts of improperly injected medicine.
Baden, the chief forensic pathologist for the New York State Police and a frequent expert witness in criminal cases, reviewed slides of Zadroga's lung tissue and said he saw large glass fibers and other materials that would have come from toxic dust, such as plastic. He said the material was found "primarily in the airways,'' not deep in the tissue.
He said that is proof that the particles were inhaled, and not injected.
He also said that if Zadroga had been grinding down pills and injecting them, his autopsy report would have noted scars and needle tracks on his arms.
Zadroga's father, Joseph Zadroga, said he kept his son's medication locked in a safe in their New Jersey home, where he lived for the last two years of his life. He said his son was not capable of taking medicine himself. "His mother and I were taking care of him,'' Zadroga said.
Zadroga, a nonsmoker, was "built like an ox'' and had no trouble breathing before he rushed to the trade center on Sept. 11, but developed a cough and shortness of breath in the weeks afterward, his father said.
The family released doctors' letters that documented the breathing problems that developed shortly after the attacks. Joseph Zadroga said his son had between 20 and 30 doctors; he was on oxygen 24 hours a day and taking 15 medications in the last months of his life, including OxyContin, which was in his blood at the time of his death.
The other drugs included antibiotics he was taking intravenously, steroids, painkilling drugs, the anti-anxiety drug Xanax and antidepressants including Lexapro and Prozac.
Zadroga said his son was counseled for post-traumatic stress disorder and depression from his work at the trade center, and after his wife's death in 2003.
Zadroga became the face of post-Sept. 11 illness following his January 2006 death, with bills named after him in Congress to fund research and treatment for sick ground zero workers.
So far, Hirsch has changed the death certificate of only one person -- Felicia Dunn-Jones, a woman who died five months after the attacks -- saying that exposure to the toxic dust cloud caused or worsened her lung disease.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a key supporter of ground zero workers' causes, persuaded Zadroga to ask Hirsch for a second opinion after Hirsch added Dunn-Jones to the victims' list.
"She was very excited about it,'' Zadroga said of Maloney. "We never wanted to do it. We knew that he died from the World Trade Center.''
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