There are many unusual beaches in the world, for example, glass, black, pink and even musical ones. There are also potentially dangerous for humans among them: quicksand, rip currents, and deadly fauna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These include the beaches of the Brazilian city of Guarapari, where it is not recommended to stay for more than one hour. The city of Guarapari is located in the southeast of Brazil, in the state of Espirito Santo. This place is famous for its snow-white beaches, turquoise ocean, and affordable prices for holidays. There is all the infrastructure necessary for the resort, including numerous hotels and boarding houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The coast of the municipality of Guarapari: not Rio de Janeiro, but very similar But this place attracts tourists not only with sea holidays – thousands of Brazilians and guests of the country go to this coast, hoping to cure their ailments with healing sand. Despite the fact that scientists generally do not recommend going to this beach, it is never empty here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Brazil is a country with an incredibly long coastline. It can offer hundreds of kilometers of first-class beaches for recreation all year round. But the beaches of Guarapari are unlike others because this is the only place in the country where the sand is radioactive, and by nature. Monazite sand is a real treasure of these places The culprit is monazite, a reddish-brown phosphate mineral that contains several valuable rare earth elements and two radioactive ones, thorium and uranium. On average, the radiation background on the beach is 20 microsieverts per hour, but it is very heterogeneous and there are places where instruments show 130 microsieverts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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This is already dangerous because, during an x-ray examination of the chest, the human body receives only 100 microsieverts. Monazite was discovered here long ago, back in the 19th century. The pioneer was the Austrian scientist Karl Auer von Welsbach, who explored the sand of Guarapari in the 1880s. Monazite was an important raw material for the production of incandescent grids for special lighting lamps, and Welsbach immediately realized that the money here was literally lying in bags by the ocean. Monazite mining at Guarapari in the early 20th century Until the middle of the 20th century, Brazilian and Indian deposits of monazite provided the bulk of this mineral to the world market, but then more promising sands were discovered in Australia and South Africa in terms of the content of valuable elements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After the Second World War, the mining of monazite in the southeast of Brazil ceased and Guarapari fell into disrepair. But everything changed in 1972 when the well-known Brazilian doctor Silva Mello published the book \u201cGuarapari: a miracle of nature\u201d, in which he described the healing effect of monazite sand. The doctor said that lying on the sand for a long time helps to cure arthritis and some cancers. Mello assured us that natural radiation is not at all the same as radiation from equipment and urged people to improve their health at the new resort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The beach is never empty even in the early morning After that, sick and just tourists poured into the city of Guarapari. The beaches have also become popular with residents of the neighboring state of Minas Gerais, which has no access to the ocean. Now a trip to a neighboring state has become not just leisure, but an important medical event.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Visitors do their best to get as much of the \u201cnatural\u201d radiation as possible from the local sand, sung by Dr. Mello, so they often bury themselves in the sand up to their necks for several hours. In this regard, Brazilian scientists are sounding the alarm, because the abuse of rest on these paradise beaches can end badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you just come ashore, walk along the surf line, and even swim, then most likely there will be no harm. But the Brazilian Nuclear Agency warns against long visits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guarapari in the 60s. You can clearly see the place where monazite was mined in an open-pit The radiation from monazite sand is strong enough to cause serious health problems in humans, such as thyroid disease, skin cancer, and even lung cancer. Especially dangerous is the ingress of radioactive dust into the respiratory organs since in this case the tourist takes a piece of the dangerous beach with him in his lungs and bronchi and exposure continues far beyond Guarapari. Constantly chasing vacationers off the beach or lecturing them is expensive and experience has shown to be inefficient.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The nuclear agency offered a good alternative – to collect valuable but dangerous sand and take it to the industrial regions of Brazil for processing. This is what a dangerous beach looks like from a bird’s eye view In this case, Guarapari will receive more financial benefit from the sale of valuable raw materials than from tourism. Yes, and the resort will not have to be closed – monazite sand can simply be replaced with ordinary, safe sand. But for now, all these are just projects and the radioactive beach still provides its fantastically beautiful sand for relaxation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n