‘There’s no safe level’: Carcinogens found in tap water across Australia

Tap water across parts of Sydney, Newcastle, Canberra, Victoria, Queensland and the tourist havens of Rottnest and Norfolk islands has been found to contain contaminants that US authorities now warn are likely to be carcinogenic, with “no safe level of exposure”.

Experts say widespread testing of Australia’s drinking water must be an urgent priority after the US Environmental Protection Agency’s dramatic policy shift in April found there was no safe level of perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in drinking water and they were likely to cause cancer.

Forever chemicals have been found in tap water across Australia. Credit: Marija Ercegovac

The World Health Organisation’s cancer agency has gone a step further, concluding in December that PFOA is carcinogenic to humans.

Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith, a toxic chemicals campaigner who has served on United Nations expert committees, slammed it as a “national disgrace” that PFOA is now permitted in Australia’s tap water at 140 times the maximum level the US will allow.

This masthead has analysed publicly available data which indicates the chemicals have been found in the drinking water of up to 1.8 million Australians since 2010, including in the Sydney suburbs of North Richmond, Quakers Hill, Liverpool, Blacktown, Emu Plains and Campbelltown, along with the NSW regional centres of Newcastle, Bathurst, Wagga Wagga, Lithgow, Gundagai and Yass.

The pollutants have also been detected in tap water in Canberra, the inner Melbourne suburb of Footscray, inner-city Adelaide, the Queensland regional centres of Cairns and Gladstone, Kingborough in greater Hobart and locations across Darwin and the Northern Territory.

The most comprehensive data comes from a federally funded University of Queensland study published in 2011, which sampled 34 locations across the country.

Various water providers have carried out their own localised surveillance in recent years, which confirms the chemicals are still turning up in some of the same locations they were first found in 2011, in some instances at even higher concentrations.

However, this masthead wasn’t able to locate any further widespread studies of Australian tap water funded by Commonwealth agencies since the 2011 study.

During the past decade, the federal government has been defending class actions over its use of the chemicals in firefighting foam and denying they cause “important” health effects.

It reached the first of settlements with 11 communities collectively worth $366 million in the weeks after the Federal Court’s expert umpire concluded there was good evidence the chemicals potentially cause harmful health effects, including cancer.

Over the past year, PFOS or PFOA have been found in drinking water in the Sydney suburb of North Richmond, the NSW regional centres of Newcastle and Jervis Bay and in tap water on Rottnest Island, a tourist magnet because of its thriving colony of quokkas.

Testing in recent years has also uncovered the chemicals in drinking water in a string of towns across Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, the Northern Territory, Norfolk Island, and in Canberra’s catchments, where one PFOS sample taken during routine surveillance was more than seven times the US limit.

Some of the most troubling readings, breaching both Australian and US safety thresholds, were at Norfolk Island, along with the Queensland towns Ayr, Bundaberg and Macknade.

Affected water supplies have now been decommissioned in all four locations.

In 2020, the chemicals were discovered at 635 times Australia’s safe limit and thousands of times the US enforceable limit in a now-decommissioned bore on Norfolk Island that was being used to feed tap water to the hospital, airport terminal, fire station, council works depot and public toilets.

Last financial year more than 32,000 tourists touched down on the subtropical island, an Australian territory 1600 kilometres north-east of Sydney.

In April, the US unveiled maximum limits of PFOA and PFOS in drinking water of four parts per trillion, the lowest target water providers would feasibly be able to implement.

However, the agency also warned water providers should be striving to meet the non-enforceable goal level of zero, because there was no level of exposure “without a risk of adverse health effects”.

It’s a stark comparison to Australia’s drinking water guidelines set in 2018, which allow 560 parts per trillion of PFOA and 70 parts per trillion of PFOS.

The two chemicals in the spotlight are part of a broader family of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), best known as “forever chemicals” because they never break down in the environment and linger for years in the human body.

‘We’re not different’

This masthead contacted all 23 affected Australian drinking water providers and they responded that their water is safe because levels detected fall within Australia’s drinking water guidelines.

However, many exceed the new US safety thresholds, which are based on recent scientific evidence showing forever chemicals are more dangerous than previously understood.

The US EPA has pledged its new rules will prevent thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of serious illnesses.

“The science is clear,” it said.

Dr Nicholas Chartres, a senior research fellow from the University of Sydney’s faculty of medicine and health, said the chemicals posed just as much risk to the health of Australians as to people in the United States.

“We’re no different, physiologically,” Chartres said. “We should have the concern we’re potentially getting exposed to those health effects.”

Experts were scathing about Australia’s failure to conduct widespread monitoring and instead focus on testing water supplies close to contamination hotspots.

Sydney University’s Dr Nicholas Chartres said the new US safety thresholds were based on gold standard scientific assessments. Credit: Nick Moir

A Department of Health spokesperson said that testing varied across water utilities based on the different risks of PFAS in different water supplies, as with other threats to water safety.

In cases where the presence of the chemicals was suspected due to past use in firefighting foam, detailed investigations were carried out to determine the risk to drinking water sources, the spokesperson added.

The peak body for Australia’s urban water industry, the Water Services Association of Australia, also defended that approach.

“The most effective way to limit PFAS in drinking water is to identify potential point sources of contamination within drinking water catchments, and work with relevant stakeholders to put in place effective control measures,” executive director Adam Lovell said.

“Source control is generally lower cost, less energy intensive and more effective than implementing treatment technology.”

But Lloyd-Smith spurned the claim that widespread testing wasn’t necessary. She argued such an approach posed a real risk of allowing the ongoing contamination of Australia’s drinking water.

“To make such a claim is particularly foolhardy in the light of research showing PFAS being detected in nearly 50 per cent of drinking water samples that were tested across Australia,” Lloyd-Smith said.

That data, from the 2011 study, uncovered the contaminants in suburbs of Sydney significant distances away from sites where the firefighting foam was used.

“PFAS are ubiquitous in the environment with a myriad of sources,” Lloyd-Smith said.

Dr Mariann Lloyd-Smith said widespread sampling of Australian drinking water must be an urgent priority for the government. Credit: iKandy Films

Forever chemicals have been found atop Mount Everest, in polar bears, in rainwater, sea spray from the ocean, fire stations, airports, Defence bases, ports, industrial sites, pesticides, stormwater and wastewater treatment plants.

A 2021 University of Queensland study found wastewater treatment plants are “central to the PFAS problem” because they are often the final destination for forever chemicals waste from consumers and industry.

The plants can be only “partially effective” at removing PFAS from wastewater, the study found. If contaminated water was released back into the environment, it could end up re-contaminating the food chain and drinking water supplies.

Anthony Amis from Friends of the Earth has spent years tracking the contamination of Australian drinking water supplies with PFAS.

‘Some communities would have been drinking PFAS at dangerous levels for years, and possibly decades.’

Anthony Amis from Friends of the Earth

While most water providers make their surveillance data available to the public, others have kept it shrouded in secrecy. Amis was forced to use freedom of information requests to obtain data for several Victoria towns, which he shared with this masthead.

“Some of the communities would have been drinking PFAS at dangerous levels for years, and possibly decades,” Amis said.

“Why is it that people have been exposed at these levels, without regulatory bodies knowing until very recently?”

Anthony Amis from Friends of the Earth has been on a years-long crusade to uncover data on the contamination of Victoria’s drinking water with forever chemicals. Credit: Wayne Taylor

A forever problem

Australia’s Drinking Water Guidelines are developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council. They guide the states, which regulate water quality, and water suppliers on how to monitor and manage threats to drinking water quality.

The council is reviewing its guidelines for PFAS in the wake of the overseas developments.

“The independent review will consider recent guidance and reviews from international and national jurisdictions and determine whether they are suitable to adopt or adapt for Australia,” a Department of Health spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added the guidelines are based on the “best available scientific evidence” and, if implemented, assure the safety of consumers.

‘[The US EPA] identified a really large scope of health effects that hadn’t been identified before.’

Dr Nicholas Chartres from the University of Sydney

Chartres called on Australian regulators to act swiftly to bring safety thresholds into line with those in the US.

“There’s no way they can scientifically defend not taking on the US EPA’s evaluations, because of the level of rigour and transparency that’s been done with these evaluations,” Chartres said.

He added that Australian regulators did not have the resources to carry out assessments on the same scale.

“[The US EPA] identified a really large scope of health effects that hadn’t been identified before, they’ve spent a huge amount of money and time doing this evaluation.”

Lovell said it was not unusual for guidelines to vary from country to country depending on their purpose, the local context and interpretation of evidence.

“The body of available evidence is assessed using best practice evidence review methods and is considered in the Australian context,” Lovell said.

Professor Denis O’Carroll from the University of NSW said different jurisdictions had different risk appetites and ways of calculating what was safe, which could present a confusing picture for consumers.

“For me, it’s hard. For the average consumer, it would be even harder,” he said.

O’Carroll noted that leading jurisdictions were now moving to set limits for the entire class of around 14,000 forever chemicals, instead of focusing on individual types.

The new US enforceable limit is so minuscule it represents the equivalent of four grains on a beach containing a trillion grains of sand.

Australian scientist Dr Nathan Weber, an ORISE fellow at the US EPA, said the risk came from small levels building up in the body over time.

“Every time you drink, four parts per trillion slowly accumulates up and up and up and becomes problematic,” Weber said.

Weber added that Australian authorities should be sampling locations over an extended timeframe to get a clear picture of concentrations, given levels could fluctuate significantly, particularly in periods of rain.

Certain home water filters, such as those using granular activated carbon or reverse osmosis, can remove PFAS at the tap.

But Chartres warned such measures were not a silver bullet for Australia.

“The people that are most at risk of disease are often low income, communities of colour, fenceline communities, workers that are unable to afford these types of interventions,” he said.

Polluter pays

Chartres said Australia should be looking to force the manufacturers of forever chemicals to the negotiating table to pay for the testing of Australia’s drinking water.

The Australian government confirmed in April that it is contemplating suing Wall Street giant 3M to claw back some of its financial losses from the spread of contamination across the country.

3M’s global headquarters in Maplewood, Minnesota.Credit: Bloomberg

3M’s scientists first invented forever chemicals in the 1930s, and their extraordinary capacity to repel water, oil and stains has since propelled the company to billion-dollar profits.

3M used PFOS to manufacture best-selling fabric protector Scotchgard and grease-proof food packaging. It sold PFOA to Dupont, which used it to revolutionise home cooking with the creation of non-stick Teflon pots and pans.

By the turn of the century, PFOS could be found in the blood of almost every Australian, at average levels 20 times higher than what 3M’s own scientists considered safe.

The new Stan documentary How to Poison a Planet, a joint investigation by this masthead and iKandy films, reveals how forever chemicals manufacturers are alleged to have deceived the world for decades about the dangers of the substances.

Levels of PFOS and PFOA in Australian blood have plummeted dramatically since 3M abandoned their manufacture in the early 2000s, and countries around the world have banned the chemicals.

The World Health Organisation and authorities in the United States, Europe and the UK have now tied the chemicals to a slew of adverse health effects, including cancer, increased cholesterol, suppression of the immune system, interference with hormones and developmental effects in children.

3M recently agreed to a historic $19 billion payout to clean up thousands of water supplies across the United States.

Asked whether the company should pay for the monitoring and clean up of Australia’s drinking water, a 3M spokeswoman issued a statement:

“We are committed to compliance with relevant laws and regulations, and we will continue to work to address legacy PFAS,” she said.

“We announced in 2000 that we would phase out of manufacturing PFOA and PFOS and have done so worldwide.

“We also announced in 2022 that we would exit all PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025 and are on schedule to do so.”

Australia’s ban on the chemicals will come into effect in mid-2025.

Water worry

The highest levels from the 2011 study were seen at Glenunga in inner-city Adelaide, where PFOS was nearly quadruple the US four ppt enforceable limit.

Glenunga’s water supply is not currently monitored for forever chemicals, according to SA Water.

A spokeswoman said regulators advised that regular sampling was not required because assessments had not identified any sources of PFAS representing a risk to the state’s water supplies.

Five water supplies exceeded the US enforceable limit in the 2011 study, including Quakers Hill and North Richmond in north-western Sydney and Gundagai, in the NSW Riverina region.

The researchers discovered PFOS or PFOA above the US goal level of zero in a further 16 out of 28 locations, including the Sydney suburbs of Liverpool, Blacktown, Emu Plains and Campbelltown and the NSW regional towns of Yass, Wagga Wagga, Lithgow and Bathurst.

The researchers also detected traces of PFOS in tap water at Footscray, a rainwater tank at Riddells Creek in Victoria’s Macedon Ranges, and in a bottle of store-bought water.

The research team, who were funded by the Australian Research Council and published their findings in the journal Chemosphere, did not respond to a request for comment.

Greater Western Water supplies tap water to Footscray. A spokeswoman said it was committed to delivering safe, high-quality drinking water to consumers and it proactively tested in its reservoirs, which showed levels were with Australian guidelines.

A Melbourne Water spokeswoman noted it had been 13 years since the study was published and sampling methods had evolved since that time.

She said the city’s drinking water was among the best quality in the world and 99 per cent of samples did not contain PFAS during two rounds of proactive testing.

“The few samples where PFAS was found … pose no threat to public health,” she said. “Melbourne Water periodically reassesses the need for further investigative monitoring.”

North Richmond is the only site Sydney Water regularly tests for PFOS and it was found there as recently as January.

Sydney Water only tests drinking water for forever chemicals at North Richmond, where they have been detected in recent months. Credit: Rhett Wyman

A Sydney Water spokeswoman said there were no known PFAS hotspots in its drinking water catchments.

“Sydney Water regularly consults with WaterNSW, our raw water supplier, and NSW Health to assess any potential risk of PFAS to Sydney’s drinking water supply,” she said.

In December, PFOS was found above the US enforceable limit at five ppt in the Grahamstown Dam drinking water system, which supplies the densely populated Newcastle region in NSW.

According to Hunter Water, a subsequent sample at that location was below the limit of reporting.

A spokeswoman said it routinely tested for PFAS in the drinking water supply to more than half a million customers and the results confirmed it was safe and reliable.

Icon Water, responsible for Canberra’s catchments, confirmed PFOS had been found on one occasion at 20 parts per trillion and another at 30 parts per trillion.

It did not say when or where those samples were taken but noted they were not repeated in subsequent testing. It has been conducting routine surveillance since 2020.

“Icon Water maintains a precautionary approach, staying abreast of the science and continues to provide drinking water consistent with the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines,” a spokesman said.

Monitoring picked up both chemicals in tap water in May last year at Rottnest Island, where about 730,000 visitors flock each year to snap a selfie with a quokka.

Hundreds of thousands of tourists flock to Rottnest Island each year for an encounter with a quokka. Credit: Tourism Western Australia, James Vodicka

PFOA was found at 10 parts per trillion, more than double the US enforceable limit.

The two chemicals have previously been discovered in the island’s Herschel Lake, which is flanked by a former landfill.

The Rottnest Island Authority declined to comment.

The chemicals have also been found in drinking water in Jervis Bay last October. The coastal hamlet is a popular destination for campers in summer and the home of the Wreck Bay Aboriginal community.

Forever chemicals have been found in the drinking water at Jervis Bay, which is inundated with tourists over the warmer months. Credit: Rhett Wyman

A Department of Infrastructure spokesperson said tests showed the water was safe and confirmed that work was continuing to connect Jervis Bay territory to the neighbouring Shoalhaven region’s water supply.

Barwon Water supplies tap water to people along Victoria’s picturesque south-west coast.

It has detected PFOS above the US enforceable limits at Moorabool in 2021 and above the goal level in the towns of Gellibrand and Lorne in 2018.

Water from the Moorabool system usually supplies areas north of Geelong but can be used to supplement the city itself when required.

“Barwon Water follows rigorous processes to ensure that the drinking water we supply meets high-quality standards and is safe for our customers,” said chief scientist Will Buchanan.

The chemicals have also been detected in drinking water supplies at Sale and Briagolong in Victoria’s Gippsland region.

A Gippsland Water spokesman said it has undertaken regular, precautionary testing in its tap water at Sale, Seaspray and Briagolong since 2017 due to potential sources of contamination in the area such as firefighting.

“We share the results with our customers and community on our website,” he said.

“Our testing results have always shown PFOS and PFOA levels to be well below the limits contained in the national guidelines.”

Power and Water Corporation, which supplies the Northern Territory, found the chemicals in drinking water supplies across Alice Springs, Katherine, Batchelor, Pine Creek and Adelaide River, according to its latest sampling results published in 2022.

It has taken a number of its groundwater bores offline, as well as constructing Australia’s largest PFAS treatment plant at Katherine.

“Power and Water is committed to providing access to safe, sustainable and secure drinking water for all Territorians,” a spokeswoman said.

A bore in the Western Australia regional centre of Esperance was decommissioned after the chemicals were detected there in 2019.

“At that time, the level detected was well below the new US guideline of four ppt,” a Water Corporation spokeswoman said. She noted there had been no further detections above Australian guidelines in drinking water supplies at either Esperance or Perth.

The chemicals have not been detected during recent precautionary sampling rounds in Darwin, Cairns and Tasmania, authorities confirmed.

TasWater chief scientist Graham Hawke noted the two Tasmanian samples in the 2011 study were very substantially below Australian guidelines and less than one-half to one-quarter of the new US EPA enforceable limits.

“TasWater have previously tested our highest risk drinking water catchments and found no PFAS,” he said.

A Riverina Water spokesman said that PFAS had not been detected in its East Wagga bores, despite ongoing concern about a contamination plume from a nearby Defence base.

“Defence will continue to monitor the results of its sentinel bores,” she said.

However, the chemicals have been found in a bore at West Wagga.

Revealed: How To Poison A Planet now streaming, only on Stan.

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