Early testing points to thorium West Chicago home could have unsafe levels.(News)

0 Comments | Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL), July, 2007

Byline: Rupa Shenoy rshenoy@@dailyherald.com A slow, steady rhythm of high-pitched beeps fills Sandy Riess' West Chicago basement Friday morning as a technician swings a Geiger counter over the walls and floor. Suddenly, as the instrument hovers over a circular sewer lid in the floor, the well-spaced chirps take on a fast-paced intensity, nearly becoming a single tone.

Technician Steve Shafer, of the Illinois Emergency Management Agency's Division of Nuclear Safety, pries the lid loose with a screw, revealing a 3-foot-deep hole with a dirt bottom and brick- lined sides. Federal Environmental Protection Agency health physicist Gene Jablonowski crouches close with a space age-looking device. "It says it's thorium," he says. Jablonowski immediately...