City Official: 9/11 Dust did not kill detective

New York City's chief medical examiner has concluded that the death of a city police detective who worked hundreds of hours on the smoldering debris pile at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks was not caused by exposure to toxic dust.

Contradicting a New Jersey pathologist who had found the death "directly related" to ground zero dust, the medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, acknowledged that "foreign material" had been found in the lungs of the detective, James Zadroga, but insisted that it had not come from the trade center site.

In a letter to the detective's father, Joseph Zadroga, of Little Egg Harbor, N.J., Hirsch did not cite a cause of death. But he said his review of medical records, the earlier autopsy report and slides of the victim's lung tissue - all provided by the detective's family - had found no link to the trade center.