Brazil

• No unusual congenital abnormalities, stillbirths, or changes in live births could be found in a Brazilian study of 44,000 pregnancies, even though the background radiation was five to ten times "normal."
• (From the same investigation) "The high terrestrial radiation, 9 mGy/year [900 mrem/yr], in Espirito Santo, Brazil did not affect the fertility of 8,000 couples in this study. [Freire-Maya, A. and Kreiger, H. Human genetic studies in areas of high natural radiation. Health Physics, 34, 61, 1978.]
• The beaches of Guarapari have 25%-35% monazite sand giving a dose to vacationers (who bury themselves in it) of 0.03 mGy/hr (at least 30 mrem per ten-hour day - 420 mrem for a two-week vacation). Though it's illegal, the tourists steal the rocks and sand for their bedrooms at home. [Cullen, T.H., et al. Two decades of research in the Brazilian areas of high natural radioactivity. Radiation Protection: A Systematic Approach to Safety, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1980.]

Breaking News!! EPA Restricts Foreign Travel Because of Dangerous Radiation Levels

[Well, not yet really... but give them a little.]

The highest background radiation levels I could find are in China, India, Brazil, and Iran (more on this in chapter 17). All these countries have deposits of monazite - a black sand often found on beaches and in rare earth deposits - in which the principle radioisotopes are from the decay of thorium 232 and radium 226.

The 80,000 people of Kerala, India, receive up to 1,300 mrem (1.3 cSv or about three-and-a-half times our background exposure) per year and have been recognized for their healthfulness compared with neighboring states. The 10,000 citizens of Guarapari, Brazil, and the vacationers that flock to their beaches to bury themselves in the black sand absorb 0.03 mGy (3mrem) per hour - the equivalent of 26,280 mrem (2.6 cSv or about eighty-seven times our background) per year. [It is illegal to take the sand, but it has been done for centuries by tourists who have heard of its benefits and keep it under their beds. By so doing they receive little additional "through skin" radiation, but are exposed to continuing sources of breathable radon.]

Meanwhile in Ramsari, Iran, the 2,000 inhabitants and their ancestors have lived for centuries begin exposed up to 48,000 mrem (48 cSv or 132 times the U.S. average) and "survived" to tell about it... in fact they keep on surviving to the point that our regulators are wearing out their fingernails from scratching their LNT - and collective dose - heads. (Actually, they just engage in politically correct science: ignore those data that are inconvenient.)

Table 10 – Background Radiation in Various Locations with Comparisons
Case/Place	cGy/yr	mrem/year	Ratio to U.S. average
EPA level of concern	0.001	1	0.003
Limit nearby nuclear power plant	0.005	5	0.016
Proposed EPA maximum (all sources)	0.100	100	.3
U.S. average background	0.300	300	1.0
Chernobyl forced resettlement**	0.500	500	1.7
Colorado plateau	0.600	600	2.0
Kerala, India	1.3	1,300	4.3
Gerais, Brazil	2.3	2,300	7.7
Hormesis optimum (Luckey)	10.0	10,000	33.3
Guarapari Beach, Brazil	26.3	26,300	87.6
Ramasari, Iran (average)	48.0	48,000	132
* Adapted from “Radiation Hormesis for Health” by T.D. Luckey, Health Physics Newsletter, June 1995.
** In areas where the natural background plus the Chernobyl contribution exceeded this limit, 200,000 people were forcibly resettled.