Twenty-year-old Amara Strande died from a rare liver cancer in April 2023, after a five-year fight against the disease that spread through her body.

“The time bomb that went off in Amara was an incurable cancer that caused a 15-pound tumor to take over the liver of a 15-year-old child,” recalls Strande’s sister Nora.

The two siblings grew up in Oakdale, in the eastern metro, where state water testing has found high levels of PFAS chemicals in the drinking water supply.

Doctors have not directly linked Strande’s cancer to the water supply, but health experts say long-term PFAS exposure has been linked to some cancers, pregnancy complications and high cholesterol issues.

She spent her final months lobbying lawmakers to pass measures to regulate the forever chemicals.

“The science that proves forever chemicals are dangerous is solid,” declared Strande’s father, Michael. “The fear in Amara’s eye as she fought for her last breath was horrendous to watch as Amara’s mother and sister and I held her broken body in the last minutes of her life.”

“I live in Afton, my own well is contaminated,” State Sen. Judy Seeberger (DFL) told reporters. “I have the big filters in my basement.”

Strande’s family, politicians, and environmental groups held a news conference Friday, just days after the Cookware Sustainability Alliance, a California-based industry group, filed a lawsuit in federal court, challenging Minnesota’s new PFAS ban.

The lawsuit argues that PFAS coating in cookware does not harm human health, is FDA-approved, and that the law discriminates against interstate commerce.

But the Ecology Center, a Michigan nonprofit watchdog group, says it’s the production process that’s a continuing source of pollution.

The group notes during that process, PFAS chemicals ‘may be emitted to environment at various steps along the path from raw materials to finished non-stick product.’

In a report, the center says during the manufacturing of products, ‘waste streams may flow to the surrounding water, soil, and air.’

Critics aren’t commenting specifically on the lawsuit but say they want to ‘set the record straight’ on the Minnesota law, also known as ‘Amara’s Law.’  

“Do we care about our health and our safety or the profits of multi-million and multi-billion-dollar chemical makers, who knowingly polluted our communities and our children for decades,” says Avonna Starck, the state director for Clean Water Action Minnesota.

The new ban says 11 consumer product categories, including cookware, rugs, cosmetics and others, must be free of intentionally added PFAS to be sold in Minnesota.

Non-essential uses of PFAS that are not among those categories are to be banned by 2032, as determined by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA).

Industries that do not have a safer alternative will have the ability to seek an exemption from the MPCA.

“We’re trying to control the source, which is during the manufacturing process,” says Dave Dalquist, the CEO of St. Louis Park-based Nordic Ware. “Environmental groups were calling attention to it, so we were continually monitoring that.”  

Dalquist says the company stopped using PFAS chemicals in its manufacturing process 18 months ago.

He says consumers aren’t going to want PFAS in the future and notes there are better products out there.

Dalquist says he wants to reassure customers that previously bought Nordic Ware products, like bundt pans, are safe to use.

“Started to phase it down and develop new suppliers and different products,” Dalquist explains. “This ceramic coating we’re talking about; that’s much more durable and long-lasting. There are alternatives and we need to change, we need to evolve with time.”

In a statement, the Cookware Sustainability Alliance says it is asking the federal court for a preliminary injunction of the law.

Seeberger, sponsor of the measure, says she’s seen no proposed bills to amend it, but she’s concerned there could be attempts to make changes.  

“I haven’t seen any bills,” she notes. “But as we’re aware, there’s a pending lawsuit commenced by the Cookware Alliance, and there have been other public statements and social media statements made by others attacking the law.”

MPCA Commissioner Katrina Kessler is named in the alliance’s legal challenge.

The agency is not commenting specifically on the lawsuit, except to say they believe the law is ‘legally sound.’

In a release, the MPCA says, ‘it is estimated Minnesota taxpayers will have to spend $28 billion in the next twenty years to remove PFAS from wastewater and landfill leachate in the state; we cannot simply clean our way out of this problem.’

“The law is really to protect everyone in the state of Minnesota and set an example for the rest of the country of how we can move forward with safer products that do not contain intentionally added PFAS,” Seeberger says.

Click here for KSTP’s full PFAS coverage.