Around the Pentagon there were reports of high radiation levels after 9-11 American Free Press has documentation that radiation levels in Alexandria and Leesburg, Va., were much higher than usual on 9-11 and persisted for at least one week afterward.
In Alexandria, seven miles south of the burning Pentagon, a doctor with years of experience working with radiation issues found elevated radiation levels on 9-11 of 35 to 52 counts per minute (cpm) using a "Radalert 50" Geiger counter.
One week after 9-11, in Leesburg, 33 miles northwest of the Pentagon, soil readings taken in a residential neighbourhood showed even higher readings of 75 to 83 cpm.
"That's pretty high," Cindy Folkers of the Washing ton-based Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) told AFP. Folkers said 7 to 12 cpm is normal background radiation inside the NIRS building, and that outdoor readings of between 12 to 20 cpm are normal in Chevy Chase, Md., outside Washington.
The Radalert 50, Folkers said, is primarily a gamma ray detector and "detects only 7 percent of the beta radiation and even less of the alpha." This suggests that actual radiation levels may have been significantly higher than those detected by the doctor's Geiger counter.