[glenstein]

This is probably a good time to tie it back to the article. Because however good or bad a critic Neil DeGrasse Tyson is, Kim Stanley Robinson is an order of magnitude better. And KSR calls bullshit in large part because the entire surface of Mars contains perchlorate at levels at least 30,000x above levels deemed safe on Earth.

Mars is almost perfectly optimized to make perchlorate as lethal as possible because Mars has extremely fine electrostatically charged dust that is suspended in the air everywhere even on clear days, covers the surface of the planet and gets into everything. Dust on Mars is 1 to 3 microns in size while sand on a typical beach is at least 500 microns. That plus global dust storms, it's a perfectly complementary pairing of lethally small and efficiently distributed. Life extectancy shrinks to 5, 10, 15ish years, maybe 20.

What's the fix? Some kind of human genetic engineering, or centuries of bacteria repairing the soil? Those aren't happening in our lifetimes.