Rio Déjà vu

While visiting Rio de Janeiro in the 1970s'as a young journalist, I took a swim off famed Copacabana Beach even though the water quality was considered problematic.

I suffered no ill effects, but was told that my swim would have been far less risky if I had ventured further out from downtown to the Ipanema and Leblon beaches. At least from the Rio residents' perspective at that time, those beaches were widely regarded as pristine.

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