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Mayor Bloomberg: James Zadroga, others will be honored

By Kathleen Lucadamo and Adam Lisberg / New York Daily News

Workers who die of illnesses traced back to Ground Zero will be memorialized separately from people killed on 9/11, Mayor Bloomberg said Wednesday - but he doesn't know how.

"I'm going to find something. It will not be with the names around the two voids" in the permanent 9/11 memorial at the site, the mayor said. "That is going to be for those people that died that day."

Bloomberg first committed to memorializing fallen workers Monday in a private meeting with the father of James Zadroga, an NYPD detective who contracted a lung disease and died after working more than 400 hours at Ground Zero.

"I did make a commitment that I would look at it," Bloomberg said. "We are trying to build a memorial that will last centuries, and we are going to give a little bit of thought to it."

But he shot down a Daily News editorial proposal, supported by several members of Congress, to set up an independent panel to determine whether a first-responder's death was caused by Ground Zero work - instead of leaving the decision up to city chief medical examiner Charles Hirsch.

"No, next question," Bloomberg snapped. "We are not going to make this a political thing. This is science."

Hirsch ruled Zadroga died from injecting ground-up pain pills, not breathing toxic air, which spurred Reps. Carolyn Maloney (D-Queens/Manhattan), Jerrold Nadler (D-Manhattan) and Vito Fossella (R-S.I.) to call for a panel of public health experts and academics to make such rulings.

"The history of 9/11 should not be decided behind closed doors by one person," Maloney said. "Advice from independent medical experts would bring standards and transparency to the sad task of adding new names to the official list of 9/11 victims."