Stormin Mormon wrote:
http://www.dangerouslaboratories.org/radscout.html
I reposted a story about that, a while back. Someone put it
on the web, too. Kid with a bunch of ambition.

As a NucE, I found the reports on that incident less than
satisfying--absolutely no indications of what levels were actually found
or actual numeric quantities of any of the materials to the point of
determining at all what level of hazard might have been.

At the time I looked for any NRC Region incident reports and found none;
my general conclusion is locals got carried away w/ chance to use their
gear and run some training exercises as much (or perhaps even more) as
it was a real problem...

The "several times background" kinds of numbers sound ominous but in
reality, given what background levels typically are and that Am is an
alpha-emitter so it's radius of being a problem even in open air is on
the order of a few cm at most the hazard is localized at most. There
was simply not enough other hard data to estimate what level of
activations he could possibly have achieved but imo highly unlikely to
have been much at all although theoretically possible some could have
occurred. The Be actually was probably the most personally hazardous
material as it is quite toxic in low quantities (not radioactive,
poisonous-style toxic).

As for the kid's counter showing contamination around the neighborhood,
I'd say the odds were/are very high he was simply carrying it around
with him unwittingly on clothing, shoes, hands, etc., and measuring it
rather than a direct line-of-sight measurement from the backyard area.
Or, of course, given the stuff he did w/o adequate respirators, etc.,
there's also a good chance he had ingested/inhaled enough that it was an
internal body loading he was measuring.

--