Last week, the Minnesota House passed the state’s largest-ever environmental and natural resources funding bill, including a ban on per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (“PFAS”) in many consumer products beginning in 2025, with a ban on most such applications in 2032. If passed in the Senate and signed by the Governor, The Gopher State would be the second state, after Maine, to impose near-total restrictions on PFAS in consumer products.
HF2310 builds on previous state legislation that never was voted upon. Specifically, the Minnesota Senate introduced SF834 in January earlier this year, which provided for softer PFAS regulations than HF2310. Meanwhile in the Minnesota House, HF1000 also was discussed, but never voted upon. It too would have provided more tempered restrictions on PFAS.
Now paired with an omnibus bill that includes $670 million in funding to various Minnesota agencies, HF2310 would prohibit the sale, offering for sale, or distribution for sale of a wide range of consumer products containing intentionally added PFAS. The following products would be prohibited from containing intentionally added PFAS by 2025: carpets and rugs, cleaning products, cookware, cosmetics, dental floss, fabric treatments, juvenile products, menstruation products, textile furnishings, ski wax, and upholstered furniture.
Additionally, manufacturers of all other products containing PFAS will be required to report their use of these chemicals to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency by January 1, 2026. A broader ban on the use of PFAS in products would go into effect on January 1, 2032, with exemptions for “unavoidable use” to be determined by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency based on submitted use data in accordance with an upcoming rulemaking.
The bill echoes legislation adopted by Maine in 2021, which banned PFAS in textiles, carpets and rugs as of January 2023, required manufacturers of other PFAS-containing products to report their PFAS uses by that same date, and imposed a ban on PFAS in most products by 2030. Maine’s Department of Environmental Protection acknowledged last year that a rule would not be in place until later this year, even though businesses were still required to begin reporting by this past January 1. Interestingly, Maine regulators have granted hundreds of company and group-specific extensions on the reporting requirements, despite the Department still working on crafting implementing rules.
HF2310 passed by a vote of 69-59, and has since been passed on to the Minnesota Senate for their review.
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