By Carrie Fellner, Ben Cubby and Daniel Lo Surdo
Australia’s safe limits for cancer-linked “forever chemicals” in drinking water will be dramatically lowered under a proposal likely to force the clean-up of tap water supplied to hundreds of thousands of people. Here’s what the changes mean for you.
What are forever chemicals?
Forever chemicals are a family of about 14,000 per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) best known for their capacity to repel oil, water and stains. They were invented in the 1940s and are used in hundreds of consumer products. They are known as “forever chemicals” because they never break down in the environment, and linger for years in the human body.
Australia is overhauling its limits for forever chemicals in drinking water. Credit: Sam Mooy
The small number of PFAS that have been closely studied by scientists have been linked to a slew of adverse health effects including cancer, suppression of the immune system, high cholesterol and hormone disruption.
What are the changes and how do they compare internationally?
The new thresholds, announced by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) on Monday, slash allowable levels of three kinds of forever chemicals in tap water and introduce limits for the first time on a fourth.
Australia’s levels, established in 2018, have been under review for two years. They have been under heavy scrutiny since the US EPA introduced the world’s toughest drinking water standards in April, warning there was no safe level of the two “probable carcinogens”: PFOS and PFOA.
Perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS): Banned chemical formerly used in fabric protectors and food packaging. Australia has proposed a limit of 4 nanograms per litre, in line with the US and more stringent than standards proposed by the World Health Organisation and Europe.
Australia currently has a limit of 70 nanograms per litre for PFOS and PFHxS combined.
Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA): Best known as the banned chemical formerly used to manufacture Teflon pans, and recently found to be carcinogenic by the World Health Organisation.
Australia would reduce its limit from 560 nanograms per litre to 200 nanograms per litre.
Australia’s limit would still be 50 times higher than America’s, and double the limits proposed by the WHO and Europe.
Perfluorohexanesulfonic acid (PFHxS): Banned chemical used to make stain- and water-protective coatings. Australia has proposed a limit of 30 nanograms per litre, three times higher than the US but significantly lower than Europe.
Perfluorobutane sulfonate (PFBS): Industry has rolled out this new type of non-stick forever chemical to replace PFOS. Australia has proposed a limit of 1000 nanograms per litre for PFBS, half the amount US drinking water guidelines recommend but about 10 times more than Europe will allow.
When do changes come into effect?
The changes have gone out for public consultation until November, with a final decision due by April 2025.
Water regulation is a matter for states and territories, so they will decide whether to implement the guidelines and the timing of any rollout.
Authorities have stressed the lag in implementation will not endanger public safety.
“These guidelines are based on a lifetime of water consumption, and therefore a relatively short period of time of consuming water above the guidelines probably doesn’t have a significant risk, but obviously the quicker we can get our PFAS levels down, the better,” said Professor Steve Wesselingh, chief executive of the NHMRC.
How many people will be affected? Will my water be tested?
Because there has been no comprehensive monitoring of all water supplies across the country for PFAS, it’s unclear how many people will be affected.
The NHMRC expects all water providers will carry out testing, but enforcement will be a matter for states and territories.
Asked whether results would be made public in a transparent national database, Australian chief medical officer Professor Anthony Lawler said that was not something federal authorities were looking to develop.
“Those discussions, in terms of how that’s publicly reported, while that’s a decision at the state and territory level, we’ll work closely with them, obviously.”
How will water be cleaned and who will pay?
Often, contaminated water sources can be disconnected from the supply. In other cases, reverse osmosis and ion exchange treatment may be installed at filtration plants to remove PFAS, as is already the case at Katherine in the Northern Territory.
Water policy expert Stuart Khan, who was an expert reviewer of the proposed guidelines, said the cost of upgrading water filtration to keep water safe would potentially be enormous.
“It’s clear that we’re talking in the billions,” said Khan, head of the school of civil engineering at the University of Sydney. “There are estimates from the water utilities in the US where it’s tens of billions of dollars over the next 20 years.”
He said the science backing up the proposed changes was strong.
Water Services Association of Australia executive director Adam Lovell downplayed how many water providers would be affected, but said swift action would be taken in response to any detections above the guidelines.
“NHMRC noted this should not be seen as a pass/fail measure, rather a trigger to investigate,” he said.
In the US, corporations that manufactured PFAS are being forced to bankroll the clean-up via multibillion-dollar legal settlements.
“We’d love to explore the potential to pursue big polluters in relation to the costs associated with this,” NSW Water Minister Rose Jackson said.
What is the situation in NSW?
NSW Health told all water providers to test for PFAS in September, with results due back by the end of the year.
So far, testing shows Sydney’s water is within proposed guidelines, but tap water supplied from the Cascade Water Filtration Plant is more than three times higher than them. This plant supplies water to more than 41,000 people throughout the upper Blue Mountains. Authorities have been working to reduce levels by re-routing the water supply.
The Cascade dams at Katoomba supply drinking water to about 41,000 residents.Credit: Wolter Peeters
Professor Ian Wright, a water scientist from Western Sydney University, said this showed the government’s assurances that the Blue Mountains water supply was safe to drink had been incorrect.
“The implications of this are enormous,” he said. “What will Sydney Water do to make their drinking water safe for the Blue Mountains? New treatment? Supply Warragamba Dam treated water? Supply bottled water?”
Wright accused Sydney Water of managing the issue poorly and said they needed to explain why they had taken so long to take the matter seriously.
“They have lost the trust of many in the Blue Mountains and this will take a long time to restore,” he said.
Jon Dee, who leads the local STOP-PFAS action group, welcomed the proposed lower limits but said residents were dismayed they were not as stringent as America’s and were not legally enforceable.
“Immediate upgrades should be required for water filtration plants that fail to supply drinking water with safe PFAS levels,” Dee said.
Last December, levels exceeding the new guidelines were discovered in a water source feeding the Grahamstown water treatment plant, which supplies water to about 400,000 people in the Newcastle region.
Jon Dee, a former NSW Australian of the year, wants the new limits to be legally enforceable. Credit: Glenn Hunt
Jackson said the water source had been isolated from the system. “There will be issues that pop up from time to time – there is PFAS in our environment,” she said.
Jackson pledged any changes in national guidelines would be adopted in NSW.
Why are some Australian standards more lax than international counterparts?
On Monday, authorities stressed it’s not unusual for guidelines to vary from country to country based on different methodologies used.
One of the major differences is that, unlike the US, Australia did not rely on human studies to determine its guidelines and instead relied on studies in laboratory animals.
“We currently don’t believe there are human studies of sufficient quality to guide us in developing these numbers,” Wesselingh said.
The US also requires water providers to bring levels of any carcinogenic chemical as close to zero as possible, whereas Australia looks to bring levels to below the threshold at which it is expected to cause harm.
Why aren’t all types of PFAS regulated?
Many banned forever chemicals are being replaced by thousands of new kinds of PFAS, and the scientific community will take decades to establish whether they are safe.
Some concerning early studies suggest new generations of PFAS may share similar toxic traits to their predecessors.
“The Australian government should consider the inclusion of a wider range of PFAS in the drinking water guidelines as is common in a number of other countries,” UNSW’s Professor Denis O’Carroll said.
Dr David Cunliffe, a member of the NHMRC water quality advisory committee, said no toxicological information was available to make decisions about the vast majority of PFAS chemicals. “So we’ve taken this path of producing individual guideline values for those PFAS where there is data available,” he said.
Professor Nicholas Chartres from the University of Sydney commended the NHMRC on its decision on PFOS but said he was very concerned they were not willing to regulate the entire class of chemicals.
Sydney University’s Dr Nicholas Chartres said PFAS need to be regulated as a class of chemicals. Credit: Nick Moir
“This is saying that governments around the world have no idea what harm these other PFAS chemicals are causing us, but they have allowed the manufacturers to produce them anyway, and we are all now being exposed to them.”
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