COTTAGE GROVE, Minn. – Minnesota has the strongest PFAS prevention legislation in the country. The pollution control agency says the state’s unique history with “forever chemicals” goes all the way back to at least 1947, when 3M began PFAS activities in Cottage Grove.
Last year, Minnesota lawmakers passed new protections after a young woman testified about contamination in her community shortly before she died. Her sister now continues the fight to protect other families.
Nora Strande’s family lives a life with one member missing.
“My sister Amara Strande was diagnosed with liver cancer at the age of 15,” explains Nora Strande.
Amara Strande’s family believes drinking water contaminated with chemicals contributed to this cancer. The rare liver cancer ravaged her body and did not respond to chemo or radiation. In total, Amara Strande has undergone more than twenty operations.
Derek Lowen went to the same high school as Amara Strande: Tartan High School in Oakdale.
“It was a brain tumor the size of a baseball,” Lowen said. “My tumor could have killed me.”
Lowen, who was diagnosed in his freshman year of high school, was in a different graduating class than Amara Strande, but they were in the same social group.
“I realized almost immediately, oh, there’s a lot of people sick around me,” Lowen said.
“They called them the cancer kids,” Nora Strande said. ‘It was a clique. It was their own group.’
A 2018 Minnesota Department of Health report shows slightly higher levels of childhood cancer in Oakdale compared to the rest of the state, but no major environmental concerns were found.
“We joked and said we had a Teflon-coated stomach,” Lowen said.
He grew up in the chemical pollution plume of 3M forever. Now he believes drinking PFAS-contaminated water contributed to his benign brain tumor.
“Our well was absolutely contaminated. I lived a mile from the dump,” he said.
He shared his story with the Minnesota Legislature, along with people like Amara Strande.
Amara Strande spent the end of her life in Minnesota’s capital testifying that she had succeeded laws that restrict chemicals forever. She died a week before the law was passed.
“They called that law Amara’s Law, after her,” Nora Strande said.
Strande family
Amara’s law will end all avoidable PFAS use in Minnesota by 2032. The first phase will begin in January 2025, when intentionally added PFAS will be banned from eleven product categories, such as cookware, carpets, children’s toys and cosmetics.
By 2026, companies must report intentionally added PFAS in all products. Thirty states have taken steps to restrict PFAS in some way, but Minnesota’s laws are now the most comprehensive in the country.
“Minnesota is in a unique place, and it’s because we have had a PFAS manufacturer here in Minnesota that led us to start our work and be the first in the country to really tackle this problem,” he said. deputy commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency. Kirk Kodelka.
The MPCA says PFAS pollution is a statewide problem. There are a slew of cities with too much PFAS in drinking water, according to a recently reduced amount EPA limits.
The MPCA says government agencies have detected PFAS in the drinking water of 42% of communities and in 98% of closed landfills.
Experts emphasize that reducing sources is critical as costs to communities increase.
Amara Strande’s family will continue the fight to help other Minnesotans.
Erin Hassanzadeh
