Rocket fuel in your salad?

• Author: Mahlmann, Margot
• Position: On the Ecology of Meat, GM Crops, and the Embodied Energy in a Car - Letter to the Editor

I am writing regarding the article by Gene Ayres on perchlorates showing up in vegetable crops ("A Little Rocket Fuel With Your Salad," November/December 2003). I was born in 1951 in Riverside, California. I have two sisters who were also born in Riverside, in 1939 and 1950. All of us have developed thyroid disease (hypothyroidism), and I have a chronic goiter visible in my throat.

The parents of my best friend in Riverside had a dairy farm, and we played there a lot. I don't remember the name of it, but I hope it wasn't Lucky Farms [a site of the contamination mentioned in the article]. Our family also drank the water from the...