Cookware Sustainability Alliance Sues Minnesota Over Nonstick Cookware Sales Ban

We sued in Minnesota this week to challenge a ban on the sale of nonstick cookware. This ban is part of a new Minnesota law—known locally as “Amara’s Law”—that swept up cookware along with a range of other categories of consumer products being newly regulated because of growing PFAS concerns.

We are asking a federal court in Minnesota for a preliminary injunction of this Minnesota law barring the sale of cookware containing fluoropolymers, which are the chemical coating on pans commonly known as nonstick cookware. Although this law defines the fluoropolymers used in cookware as “PFAS,” they are fundamentally different compounds from the chemicals that have motivated concerns about PFAS.

Our legal challenge will proceed on three tracks:

• First, most urgently, we have asked the federal court to prevent enforcement of the law as applied to nonstick cookware because the law violates the US constitution’s prohibition on individual states regulating interstate commerce.

• Second, we have lodged additional constitutional challenges to the statute, which we will ask the judge to resolve on a non-emergency timetable.

• Third, on a parallel track with our litigation, we have oMered to work cooperatively with the State to secure an exemption for fluoropolymer coated nonstick cookware because of their low-risk profile:

• Fluoropolymers are non-toxic. They have a decades-long history of safe use, including in the healthcare industry where they are used on medical implantation devices such as pacemakers and catheters.

• Fluoropolymers are not water-soluble and potential exposure through drinking water is not a concern.

• Fluoropolymers are highly stable and are not shown to degrade under normal conditions of use. They do not bioaccumulate.

• Fluoropolymers have been deemed safe for use in food contact surfaces by the United States Food & Drug Administration (USFDA), by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), as well as regulators in Germany and France.

Based on established science, the compounds in our fluoropolymer coated nonstick cookware do not endanger human health and safety. They are therefore being unfairly and unconstitutionally included in policy conversations around the country about other consumer products connected to PFAS concerns.