EPA Rolls Back PFAS Rules While Minnesota Leads on Regulation
Contributing writer Anya Armentrout examines the EPA's rollback of PFAS regulations, including approval of five new PFAS-containing pesticides and a narrowed chemical definition, even as Minnesota, where 3M first mass-produced PFOA in 1947, enforces some of the world's strongest protections under Amara's Law. University of Minnesota's Bruce Alexander notes the inconsistency in PFAS health research, while Clean Water Action's Avonna Starck and Black-owned Frog Tree Farm owners Peace Mitchell and Michael Birchard weigh the public health stakes against the burden new regulations place on small farmers.
The Environmental Protection Agency is rolling back its regulations on PFAS chemicals, worrying environmental and public health advocates.
During the Trump administration, five new pesticides containing PFAS were approved. The EPA also changed the federal definition of PFAS from a chemical containing any carbon-fluorine bonds to one containing more than one carbon-fluorine bond.
Carbon-fluorine bonds are some of the strongesn in chemistry. That makes products incredibly stable, good for firefighting foam or a protective spray. It’s also what makes them “forever chemicals,” lingering in bodies and waterways for lifetimes.
“That’s a good thing when you want to use it for a product,” said Bruce Alexander, division head of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota. “It’s a bad thing if it’s in the environment, in the body, because then it doesn’t go away. It doesn’t break down, and that’s where the forever chemicals name came from.”
PFAS is a family that includes thousands of chemicals. Some of the most commonly discussed are PFOA and PFOS, but there are myriad individual chemicals that don’t erode naturally. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found PFAS in the blood of 97% of Americans.
Research is still ongoing on the consequences of PFAS exposure. Some studies connect it to developing cancers, thyroid issues, immune issues and reproductive and developmental delays. But PFAS contains a wide variety of chemicals with a wide range of exposure levels, and other studies don’t find significant public health risk.
“The most consistent thing about the literature on PFAS is the inconsistency of it,” Alexander said, adding that the inconsistency introduces uncertainty for public health decision-makers.
The problem is complex, he said, as with many public health issues that are widespread and developing.
Avonna Starck, Minnesota director of Clean Water Action, sees changing PFAS regulations as a profit-driven push from the chemical industry that disregards public safety.
“We have children who are dying,” Starck said. “We have babies with brain cancer. This is ridiculous. We have to stop prioritizing billionaires, and we have to stop prioritizing the chemical industry’s profit over what is the right thing to do for people and what is the right thing to do for the environment.”
The Trump administration’s reversal on protection policies shifts away from a Biden administration trend toward stronger federal protections.
Peace Mitchell and Michael Birchard, owners of Frog Tree Farm, a Minnesota-based, Black-owned farm “focused on racial justice, social justice and sustainability,” said changing regulations have an outsized impact on the small, independent farmers who didn’t create the problem.
“The cost of environmental testing, potential contamination, or changing regulations can create barriers that larger, more established operations are better equipped to absorb,” Mitchell and Birchard wrote in an email. “Without targeted support, these policies risk widening existing inequities in agriculture.”
They said they support regulations that limit harmful chemicals, but also want the education and support to implement those regulations while ensuring “that all farmers, including the next generation of Black, Indigenous, immigrant, and beginning farmers, have an equitable opportunity to succeed.”
PFAS chemicals are uniquely connected to Minnesota. They were first developed by Minnesota-based company 3M, which began mass-producing PFOA in 1947. Internal reports show the company was aware of possible harms to humans from exposure to a similar chemical, PFOS. When it exposed rats and monkeys to the chemicals consistently, the animals died. Factory workers exposed to the chemicals developed liver problems. According to ProPublica, a 1979 internal company report called PFOS “certainly more toxic than anticipated.”
“It’s a Minnesota-made problem, and we know that it’s impacting our community in Minnesota,” Starck said.
Minnesota now has some of the strongest PFAS regulations in the world, stemming from Amara’s Law, which will implement a statewide ban on the sale of any product knowingly using PFAS that isn’t deemed a “currently unavoidable use.”
The law is named after Amara Strande, who died of liver cancer in April 2023 at age 20, about a week before the bill was passed. She testified to state officials in her final months about the dangers in the water at her school in Oakdale, where multiple students developed cancer. She said her classmates would joke that you shouldn’t drink the “3M cancer water” at school.
“Kids were getting sick,” Starck said. “Parents were getting sick. Teachers were getting sick.”
Starck said the policy’s implementation has been strong. Manufacturers are adapting to the regulation and finding affordable alternatives. Other states are picking up pieces of the law to develop their own legislation.
Minnesota’s definition includes single-fluorine-bonded chemicals, even if the federal government changes its own regulations. But when groundwater, lakes or streams are contaminated, they connect past state and national borders.
“Water doesn’t understand political boundaries,” Starck said.
Anya Armentrout is a freelance journalist, a student at Macalester College, and a contributing writer for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. She welcomes reader responses at aarmentr@macalester.edu.