The Associated Press
By AMY WESTFELDT
NEW YORK — James Zadroga spent 16 hours a day toiling in the World Trade Center ruins for a month, breathing in debris-choked air. Timothy Keller said he coughed up bits of gravel from his lungs after the towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001. Felix Hernandez spent days at the site helping to search for victims.
All three men died in the last seven months of what their families and colleagues say are persistent respiratory illnesses directly caused by their work at ground zero.
While thousands of people who either worked at or lived near the site have reported ailments like the “trade center cough” since the terrorist attacks, some say that only now are the consequences of working at the site becoming heartbreakingly clear.
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