Pharma Pushes Back on State PFAS Regulations
In January 2025, Minnesota’s law regulating PFAS, a class of synthetic chemicals used to make products resistant to heat, grease, oil, and water, came into effect. The statute, one of the strongest of its kind in the United States, banned the chemicals across 11 categories, from cookware to textile furnishings. Beginning in July 2026, the state will also require manufacturers to report the presence of PFAS in their products and, starting in 2032, prohibit companies from selling any product with intentionally added PFAS, with some exceptions. The goal, according to the state’s Pollution Control Agency, is to protect “human health, the environment, and taxpayer dollars” by reducing the use of PFAS.
But a coalition of drug and device makers and distributors, the PFAS Pharmaceutical Working Group, or PPWG, is pushing back, arguing that Minnesota’s sweeping restrictions place a burden on these companies, which use PFAS (an abbreviation for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) in manufacturing and packaging. Even some drugs, including Prozac and Lipitor, may be considered PFAS under some definitions. Although medical devices and drugs regulated by the Food and Drug Administration are exempt from the eventual sales ban, companies would still need to disclose detailed information about each product and the amount and purpose of each PFAS compound used.
“The unprecedented scope of Minnesota’s law – applying to all products that enter the Minnesota market – effectively imposes a nationwide PFAS restriction and reporting obligation that is not risked-based, imposes requirements with unworkable deadlines, and contains provisions inconsistent with federal law,” wrote the group, which represents major drug companies including Merck, Pfizer, and Roche, in a letter to the Department of Justice.
Additionally, PPWG wrote, having different regulations in each state creates a regulatory patchwork for companies, “where companies must often adjust operations to comply with the most restrictive state law.” Federal law should override state mandates, it concluded. The comment, which was publicly posted in September, came in response to a call from President Donald Trump’s administration to identify onerous state laws.
Yet environmental advocates are not convinced that the patchwork of regulations — or the Minnesota law, which would not ban PFAS in medical products regulated by the FDA — represents a significant burden to companies.
“Companies must often adjust operations to comply with the most restrictive state law.”
The comprehensive strategy taken by Minnesota and Maine, which also has a reporting component, is “a very pragmatic, very straightforward, and reasonable approach to a very big problem,” said Anna Reade, director of PFAS advocacy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an international environmental advocacy group. “And it’s being spun as this radical ban of all products with PFAS, and that’s really not what it is.”
The pushback may not only be about compliance issues but also about strategically avoiding PFAS regulations, said Albert Lin, a professor at the University of California, Davis School of Law who specializes in environmental and natural resources law: “Industry might be trying to head off potential broader state regulation of PFAS.”
PFAS — known as forever chemicals because they can persist in the environment for 1,000 years or longer — have been increasingly associated with a range of health concerns, including cancers, developmental delays, and hormonal disruptions.
In the mid-2010s, the prevalence of PFAS in the environment and in everyday products began to become clear. “This really was seen as a public health emergency,” said Eve Gartner, director of Crosscutting Toxics Strategies at Earthjustice, a nonprofit that litigates environmental issues. So states, which could be nimbler than federal agencies, began to tackle PFAS regulations in waves, addressing individual product sectors like firefighting foam and packaging, said Gartner. “More recently,” she wrote in an email, “state legislation has focused on products in multiple sectors in a single bill.”
Today, 30 states have adopted policies to regulate PFAS, according to a tracker maintained by Safer States, an alliance of environmental health organizations and coalitions around the United States. Colorado, for example, prohibits the sale and distribution of oil and gas products and certain textiles containing intentionally added PFAS chemicals. But several states, including Minnesota and Maine, have gone further, moving to ban the sale of a long list of products containing intentionally added PFAS and to require companies to report the chemicals’ presence where their use is unavoidable.
In addition to keeping communities safe from toxic chemicals, said Katie Pelch, a senior scientist at the NRDC, these measures are “driving brands to become aware of the PFAS problem and realize that it’s not worth the risk.”
But for the pharmaceutical companies, the growing list of laws “vary in scope, definitions, exemptions, and compliance deadlines,” according to the PPWG’s comment. Tracking and reporting every PFAS used in complex global supply chains, the group argued, would prove to be an increased burden to industry.
“It’s being spun as this radical ban of all products with PFAS and that’s really not what it is.”
Yet this process is essential for industry transparency, said Gartner, especially pharmaceuticals, which a 2024 study found to be large contributors to PFAS presence in wastewater. “It seems like knowing about whether PFAS are in the pharmaceuticals is something that many consumers would want to know, and the companies should want to know.”
Undark reached out to all companies in the PPWG, as well as to the group’s counsel, who wrote the letter. Only a representative from Roche replied, declining to comment; the other companies did not respond.
While it’s true that states have different regulations, state policies are not as varied as they seem, said Reade, director of PFAS advocacy with the NRDC. Most target the unnecessary use of PFAS in consumer products where there are safer alternative on the market. “There’s a little bit of variation, naturally, from legislative process, but the goals are all very much the same,” Reade said. Additionally, most states with PFAS regulations on the books have aligned definitions, she pointed out, and those that differ are weaker, which makes them easier to comply with, not more difficult. “At this point, many, many states have virtually identical laws on the books,” Gartner said. “It should not be a compliance nightmare for well-resourced organizations.”
But PPWG asserted in their letter that federal requirements should take precedence over state laws — a legal doctrine called federal preemption — to ensure standard regulation across the country. The safety of drugs, biologics, medical devices, animal drugs, and their packaging have already been evaluated by the FDA, the group said. Because of that, it continued, state laws should not apply.
But this legal argument may not hold, Lin said. Federal preemption applies when a state law conflicts with federal law or where federal law explicitly prohibits state regulation, but federal oversight is limited when it comes to reporting requirements. “FDA regulates whether you can sell your product or use your product as well as the packaging that has to come with it,” Lin said. “But it doesn’t really regulate reporting requirements with respect to PFAS in the products.” (Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, the Environmental Protection Agency requires that manufacturers and importers of PFAS between 2011 and 2022 report detailed data to the agency, but that has been delayed until April 2026. The EPA recently proposed certain exceptions to this rule to, according to agency administrator Lee Zeldin, “help combat PFAS contamination without placing ridiculous requirements on manufacturers.”)
In August, a judge put Minnesota’s reporting rules on hold, saying among other things, that the rules are “not rationally related” to the objective of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, which proposed the PFAS rule, and that it exceeds the agency’s power. The judge made recommendations for the agency to make corrections and resubmit the rules. The MPCA declined to respond to the PPWG’s comment, but pointed to a statement saying that removing and destroying PFAS in wastewater in Minnesota would cost between $11 billion and $25 billion over 20 years, and therefore, Minnesota is prioritizing pollution prevention through PFAS use reporting and phasing out nonessential use in products.
For advocates, state regulation closes an important gap in tracking PFAS, helping consumers and agencies identify sources of potentially harmful chemicals and actively reducing exposures to PFAS for their residents, said Reade, and does not truly represent a compliance obstacle for pharmaceutical companies.
“If you look at the meat of what’s happening, it’s very reasonable,” she said. “And considering the impact that PFAS are having at the moment and will continue to have for generations, honestly, not enough at the moment.”