In early 2023, when the Minnesota Legislature began weighing a sweeping ban on “forever chemicals” — a class of roughly 9,000 substances used in everything from lipstick and cellphones to cookware and clothing — many lawmakers were doubtful they could get anywhere. Several bills had failed to gain traction in the state, which was home to one of the world’s largest manufacturers of the chemicals, 3M Company.

But then a young woman named Amara Strande turned up at the Capitol. Ms. Strande, who grew up near St. Paul, had been diagnosed at age 15 with a rare liver cancer, a disease she and her family attributed to drinking water polluted with per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, as forever chemicals are formally known.

At hearing after hearing, she was at the statehouse lobbying lawmakers and giving testimony. Speaking faintly into the microphone, she described her excruciating pain and the gruesome surgery she endured to have a 15-pound tumor removed. She talked about the horrors of the cancer spreading throughout her chest, cracking her ribs and immobilizing her right hand. “There are no more treatments to try,” she said. “I can no longer braid my hair or play the piano.”

Ms. Strande died that April, just two days shy of her 21st birthday. But the following month, the State Legislature passed Amara’s Law, the most aggressive PFAS ban in the country.

Amara Strande in 2022.Credit…Nicole Neri

In recent years, forever chemicals have been increasingly recognized as one of the most significant environmental threats of our time. They persist in the environment for millenniums. They spread rapidly through air and water, polluting ecosystems and human bodies everywhere, and there they stay, with the potential to damage cells and alter our DNA. The best studied of these chemicals have been linked to obesity, infertility, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, immune suppression and life-threatening pregnancy complications, among other maladies.