[Good News]: We're Cleaning House.
States Aren't Waiting For Washington and Neither Should You. Here's What We Know About The New Wave of Legislation Addressing Toxic Chemicals & Plastics.
Right now, across this country, something extraordinary is happening, and most people haven't heard about it yet. I know, we’ve got a lot going on these days.
States are done waiting. They are acting boldly and with mounting sophistication to protect families from the toxic chemicals that have been quietly contaminating our food, our water, our clothes, our children's toys, and the products we use every single day.
At least 15 major state laws are taking effect in 2026 alone. More than 275 policies are moving through legislatures in 33 states. These protections will reach more than 62 million people, addressing toxic chemicals and plastics.
Last month, Safer States released its 2026 Analysis of State Policy Addressing Toxic Chemicals and Plastics, finding that a wave of state health protections is moving from adoption to implementation this year.
Safer States is a national alliance of environmental health organizations and coalitions from across the nation working to safeguard people and the planet from toxic chemicals.
These state actions reflect a growing shift toward health-first, prevention-based policy and demonstrate how state leadership is reshaping national markets.
“Toxic chemicals and plastics are contaminating our lives without our consent,” Sarah Doll, national director of Safer States said in a statement. “The good news is that this harm is preventable. The protections taking effect this year show what strong, health-centered leadership can achieve and why state action is as important as ever.”
The forever chemical reckoning
For decades, PFAS have been in everything from firefighting foam and cookware to food packaging and cosmetics. These harmful substances don’t break down. They build up in our bodies. And for years, the companies making them knew it, and said nothing. I’ve met the firefighters whose colleagues died of cancer at alarming rates. I’ve talked to the farm families whose land was contaminated by sludge they thought was fertilizer.
Nine of the 15 major policies taking effect this year directly target PFAS.
States are phasing them out of consumer products, requiring disclosure, protecting highly exposed workers, and putting cleanup money on the table. They’re not addressing PFAS one chemical at a time; they’re going after the entire class.
That’s a smarter, stronger approach, and it’s working. Supply chains are already changing. Products are being reformulated across the country, not just in the states where the laws passed.
When one state sets a health-based standard, companies don’t typically make a special version just for that state. They change the product. That’s how state action reshapes national markets. Here’s what that looks like on the ground right now.
PFAS Bans & Disclosure Laws in 2026
Maine
Broad PFAS ban across clothing, cookware, food packaging, dental floss, children’s products, menstrual products, personal care, ski wax, and textiles.
Protects 1.4 million people
Colorado
Bans PFAS in artificial turf, cookware, carpeting, cleaning products, menstrual products, dental floss, and ski wax.
Protects 6 million people
Vermont
Bans PFAS in artificial turf, clothing, children’s products, menstrual and incontinence products, personal care products, and textiles.
Protects 648,000 people
New York
Bans PFAS and other toxic chemicals in menstrual products.
Protects 20 million people
Minnesota
Requires manufacturers to report their use of forever chemicals in all products sold in the state, making it the broadest PFAS disclosure requirement in the world.
Protects 5.8 million people
Rhode Island
Requires testing of biosolids for forever chemicals before land application, closing a loophole that let PFAS spread from wastewater back onto farmland and into food.
Protects 1.1 million people
Maine and Minnesota have both set a target of banning all unnecessary PFAS uses by 2032. These aren’t one-off fixes. They’re the beginning of a systematic phase-out.
Plastics are a public health crisis too.
I want you to think about everything you touched today that was plastic. Your coffee cup lid. A receipt at the pharmacy. Your child’s lunch container. You spinach container. Each of those items can leach toxic chemicals like endocrine disruptors, carcinogens, and microplastics directly into food, drink, and bodies.
States are now treating plastics as what they are: a public health problem, not just a litter problem. The policies advancing in 2026 target toxic chemical additives in plastics, restrict microplastics in everyday products, and push for upstream prevention. This action works to stop the harm before it spreads rather than managing the mess after the fact.
Some changes are already becoming visible in daily life. New Jersey is now requiring restaurants to serve dine-in customers with reusable utensils, disposable ones only available on request. Michigan is requiring filtered water refill stations in all schools, protecting 1.2 million students. Oregon’s ban on polystyrene in food packaging is in effect.
These policies succeed because they don’t ask individuals to make better choices. They make the safer option the default. That’s how you get lasting change.
Your lipstick, your lotion, your period products
Why are the products marketed most aggressively to women, such as cosmetics, personal care items, and menstrual products, had the least oversight and the most dangerous chemical ingredients? Am I the only one that thinks about these things?
Additionally, women of color are specifically and disproportionately targeted with products that contain higher levels of harmful chemicals. That is an injustice piled on an injustice.
States are fighting back. Washington State has enacted first-in-the-nation rules banning nine chemical classes from personal care products and cosmetics, including PFAS, phthalates, and formaldehyde-releasing chemicals.
California has banned all bisphenols from children’s feeding products, protecting 5 million children under 12.
Washington’s rules also ban bisphenols from receipt paper, those little slips of paper cashiers hand you that have been shown to transfer hormone-disrupting chemicals through skin contact.
Cosmetics, Personal Care & Everyday Product Laws in 2026
Washington
Nine chemical classes banned in personal care products and cosmetics, including PFAS, phthalates, and formaldehyde. Bisphenols banned in receipt paper.
Protects 8 million people
California
All bisphenols banned from children’s feeding products including bottles, cups, plates, utensils.
Protects 5 million children under 12
New York
Bans forever chemicals and other toxic chemicals in menstrual products.
Protects 20 million people
Michigan
Requires filtered water refill stations in all schools.
Protects 1.2 million students
These are not radical demands. They are basic dignity. And 19 major retailers have already restricted bisphenols in receipt paper nationwide in response to state action. The market is listening.
Washington is moving backward. States are charging forward.
I’ll be honest with you about the threat we’re facing. While states are stepping up, there are industry-backed proposals in Congress right now trying to gut the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA), the primary U.S. chemical safety law.
This law passed in 2016 with bipartisan support. Industry wants to kneecap the EPA’s authority to restrict dangerous chemicals, shortcut safety reviews, and strip states of their power to protect their own people.
The corporations funding those rollback efforts are the same ones that have known for years what their chemicals do to human bodies. They are not confused about the science. They are betting that we won’t fight back hard enough. They have been wrong before.
So what can you do right now?
Here’s how to start:
Find out if your state is one of the 33 considering toxic chemical legislation in 2026, then contact your state legislator and say you support it.
Call or email your U.S. Representative and Senators and tell them to oppose any weakening of the Toxic Substances Control Act.
Look up Safer States and your state’s environmental health coalition, sign up, show up, speak up.
Talk to your neighbors, your school board, your local elected officials. Local pressure is where movements are built.
When a company claims their product is safe, ask for the evidence. You have a right to know what is in the things you bring into your home.
Know that you are not alone in caring about these issues. A 2025 poll from Environmental Defense Fund found that 92 percent of U.S. adults feel that protecting clean air and safe drinking water should be treated as a top public health priority, just like preventing disease.
We can never accept “that’s just how it is” as an answer. That’s what’s happening right now in statehouses across this country.
Mothers, firefighters, farmworkers, doctors, and yes, ordinary people who are just plain fed up are working to changing the law for the better.
The states are leading. The question is whether enough of us will follow.
Keep the conversation going. What’s happening in your state?
You may find this useful https://data.carbonmapper.org/#10.09/34.254/-119.07
Loved your essay. I’m guessing we have exactly the same issues here in 🇨🇦, right?