Guarapari Beaches

About 50 km south of Vitória, the state capital of Espírito Santo, in southeastern Brazil, lies the coastal town of Guarapari, a popular tourist destination. Know for its sandy white beaches, Guarapari is a popular holiday escape for holiday makers from the landlocked Minas Gerais state as well as people from Vitória and Vila Velha. While Brazil has a long coastline and hundreds of miles of beaches, Guarapari is one of very few places where the sand is naturally radioactive.

The notorious Guarapari Beaches are located in southeast Brazil. Due to the healing powers of the enigmatic sand, doctors once bragged about the health advantages of visiting the beach. Monazite, a mineral that was also saturated with radioactive thorium, was present in the sand.

Tourists flocked to the beaches in the 1970s because they believed doctors who claimed radiation could heal arthritis; these beaches were roughly as radioactive as a chest x-ray. Despite the fact that the tourism sector continues to promote these notions, excessive beach time is not advised due to the risk of gamma radiation exposure.