Dying woman's fight leads to nation's toughest PFAS law

Dying woman's combat leads to toughest PFAS prohibition

How a dying woman's combat led to the toughest PFAS prohibition successful the U.S. 03:14

Minnesotans telephone it "Amara's Law" — named for Amara Strande.

Starting this year, it's America's strictest authorities instrumentality policing PFAS, compounds known arsenic "forever chemicals." They are recovered successful mundane products specified arsenic non-stick cookware and cosmetics and linked to puerility cancers and different wellness issues.

"It's successful products. In humans. It's successful animals. It's successful the air. It's successful the water. It's successful fish," said Katrina Kessler, commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. "And we each request to deliberation astir vulnerability to PFAS and ways to mitigate PFAS."

Strande was 20 and dying of liver crab erstwhile she testified earlier authorities lawmakers astir the contented successful 2023.

"PFAS person created a nationalist wellness situation that has plagued my assemblage for astir 60 years," Strande said during her testimony.

Minnesota's caller instrumentality volition reduce, past eliminate, the manufacture and merchantability of nonessential PFAS products by 2032. 3M, a multinational corporation headquartered adjacent Minneapolis, developed PFAS and manufactured them for decades. According to the state, PFAS waste, discarded into landfills, leached into section groundwater.

"Don't portion the 3M crab h2o became the moving gag astatine my precocious school," Strande testified.

There's nary definitive impervious PFAS caused Strande's cancer, but her convictions inspired lawmakers to act.

Michael and Nora Strande, Amara's begetter and sister, spot the instrumentality arsenic her legacy.

"She had a thrust similar nary 1 other I know," Nora said.

"She wasn't funny successful being an adversary. She was funny successful being a spouse successful solving the issue," Michael said.

3M told CBS News it supports "...regulations based connected the champion disposable subject and established regulatory practices." The institution said it volition halt producing PFAS by the extremity of this twelvemonth and agreed to wage the authorities $850 cardinal for a PFAS clean-up.

"One idiosyncratic tin marque a difference. You conscionable person to person the willingness to combat the bully fight," Michael said.

Strande died 5 weeks earlier the measure became law. 

• Minnesota
• PFAS