Each morning, Eric Peoples sits up in bed and starts his day with a cough. A deep, long, hacking cough.

He plants his feet on the bedroom floor and immediately feels as if someone is standing on his chest. That’s a good day. When it gets really bad, it seems as though a giant creature is crushing his lungs, squeezing the breath out of him.

Eric Peoples has lived this way for several years. He got sick while mixing butter flavoring at a Missouri microwave popcorn plant, developing a ravaging lung disease that has tormented a small but alarming number of food workers across the nation.

Peoples sued. He won millions of dollars. Money isn’t a worry now. His health is.

At 35, he has lost three-fourths of his lung capacity. He relies on oxygen when it’s humid; one day, he may need a double lung transplant.

Peoples says no amount of money can make up for missing out on the chance to play ball with his son or teach his daughter to ride a bike. He isn’t as angry as he once was, he says, and is thrilled that some microwave popcorn makers will stop using the chemical tied to his illness.

But even now, it’s confounding to him that a pungent-smelling flavoring he poured in giant vats, a bright yellow pudding-like substance used to improve the taste of a common snack – popcorn – could change his life.

“When I first started getting sick, I was trying to figure out what it was,” he says. “It never dawned on me that it was the butter flavoring. It’s food. You eat it. I kept telling my family, surely it can’t be. Why would something like that be harmful? How could it be bad?”

For several years, diacetyl, a chemical that gives foods a buttery taste, has been linked to a rare, irreversible lung disease. The result has been a public health debate that has stretched from Congress to courtrooms across the nation, leading to tens of millions of dollars in judgments.

Scientists, doctors, politicians, food companies, labor unions, lawyers and others have weighed in – some pointing angry fingers at the government – as hundreds of workers have claimed they have severe lung disease or other respiratory illnesses from inhaling diacetyl vapors.

And it may go beyond workers. It was recently disclosed that a man who ate at least two bags of buttery microwave popcorn daily for several years may have the same disease found in workers. His lung problems were linked to breathing the vapors.

Now some major microwave popcorn companies have eliminated or plan to drop the ingredient, while Congress – with the support of the flavoring industry – is looking to reduce the danger in the workplace. But the Bush administration, some business groups and others say there isn’t enough scientific evidence to warrant immediate government limits.

Edwin Foulke Jr., a top federal official, testified this spring at a congressional hearing that diacetyl is a “substance of suspicion,” but there’s no clear evidence it’s the one chemical that causes this disease.

But the doctor who was one of the first to detect the illness in workers says the science is solid and popcorn makers are right to drop diacetyl.

“I just wish this had been done earlier,” says Dr. Allen Parmet, a Kansas City public health physician. “There are hundreds of people who are sick and who are hurt and it never should have happened.”

Seven years ago, an attorney asked Parmet to review the medical records of several workers with some unusual lung problems.

Within 20 minutes, Parmet says, he knew what it was: bronchiolitis obliterans, a devastating disease that destroys the small airways of the lungs, leaving victims coughing and gasping for air.

Parmet had seen it only three times in 25 years. Now he was poring over documents indicating several people had the disease – all employees of the Gilster-Mary Lee microwave popcorn plant in Jasper, Mo.

There have been three reports of deaths among workers.

How many people are ill is unclear.