For our family, PFAS pollution is not an abstract environmental issue. It is personal.
Our daughter, Amara, was diagnosed with a rare liver cancer when she was 15 years old. Over the next five years, she endured more than 20 surgeries, countless hospital stays, treatments, scans, procedures, and far too much pain for one young person to carry.
Amara died in 2023. She was 20 years old.
We will never be able to prove exactly what caused Amara’s cancer. But we raised our daughters in Minnesota’s east metro, in a community where drinking water was contaminated for decades by PFAS chemicals.
We have lived among families who have faced cancers, tumors, illnesses, and the lingering question of what these chemicals may have done to our bodies and to our children.
Once you know that, you cannot unknow it.
And once we understood the persistence and danger of PFAS, we knew that cleaning up contamination, while essential, could never be enough. We also have to stop putting these chemicals into our environment in the first place.
That is why prevention matters so deeply to us.
Amara understood this. Even while she was sick, she used her voice to advocate for change. In the final months of her life, she helped advocate for legislation that would become known as Amara’s Law, landmark Minnesota legislation designed to prevent unnecessary uses of PFAS and protect future generations.
She knew she might not live long enough to benefit from that work herself. She did it anyway.
That is the part of her story we carry with us.
PFAS chemicals do not simply disappear. They persist in our water, soil, wildlife, and bodies. We cannot continue manufacturing and using these chemicals unnecessarily and expect future generations to deal with the consequences.
Prevention means asking a simple question: If a product does not need PFAS, why are we putting PFAS in it?
For us, this is not about fear. It is about responsibility.
We know what it is like to sit beside a child in a hospital room. We know what it is like to wait for scan results, to travel for another treatment, and to hope that one more surgery might give you more time. And we know what it is like to bury a daughter.
No family should have to wonder whether preventable chemical exposure contributed to their child’s illness.
That is why Michael and I continue to stand with Clean Water Action and others working for strong PFAS protections. We believe Minnesota can continue to lead the nation by preventing pollution before it happens, holding polluters accountable, supporting safer alternatives, and refusing to weaken protections that have already been won.
Amara used to say that she wanted what happened to her to mean something.
We cannot change what happened to our daughter. But we can help determine what happens next.
Every unnecessary use of PFAS that we eliminate is less PFAS entering our water, our soil, and our bodies. Every strong prevention policy is a promise that we have learned something from the harm already done.
For us, PFAS prevention is ultimately an act of love: love for our children, love for our neighbors, and love for generations of people we will never meet.
That is why we will keep speaking.
And that is why we hope you will stand with us.
With gratitude and hope,
Dana & Michael Strande
