The Freedom Tower

While the family and the New York police union believed a detective who died in 2006, died of disease caused by his exposure to toxic dust at Ground Zero, the city medical examiner says it was a self-inflicted drug problem.
The city medical examiner said Det. James Zadroga died at the age of 34 from lung disease caused by injecting ground up pills, not toxic air inhaled while he worked for a very long time clearing rubble at the World Trade Center after the 9/11 attacks.
“The lung disease is not due to anything that was inhaled it was because of what was put through his blood stream,”
Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner, said on Thursday. “He ground up drugs and injected them.”
“Talc and cellulose were found. Those two are used as binders when the companies make prescription drugs,” she said.
Those insoluble ingredients of the drugs helped cause the lung disease that killed Zadroga.