Experts and water providers have called for a broad ban on so-called “forever chemicals” at a Senate inquiry into PFAS, warning of environmental harm and increasingly costly removal.
The Water Services Association of Australia’s executive director, Adam Lovell, said a ban should be imposed on PFAS in non-essential consumer products. “We need to reduce now, as much as possible, how much PFAS is in the environment.
“We’re deeply concerned about the levels of PFAS that are being allowed to enter the country through thousands of everyday household and industrial chemicals and products.”
The New South Wales EPA told the inquiry it had identified 51 sites in the state with significant PFAS contamination that required continued monitoring and remediation.
The inquiry on Wednesday heard that removing PFAS from water supplies and wastewater was difficult and costly.
Lovell said installing new treatment plants to remove PFAS would require “hundreds of millions of dollars” in capital and operating costs, “increasing pressure then on water bills”.
Purchasing 1kg of a PFAS chemical cost about $150, Lovell estimated, but treating that same quantity of chemical after it had gone through a wastewater system would cost between $4m and $25m.
Sydney Water’s executive general manager, Paul Plowman, said it was currently designing its first thermal treatment facility, which would heat biosolids from wastewater to very high temperatures to destroy PFAS molecules, creating a charcoal-like substance called biochar. “It’s extremely energy intensive and very, very expensive,” he said.
“Wherever we look, we find it,” said Dr Ian Wright of Western Sydney University, whose research group has identified PFAS in platypuses. “There’s a growing worldwide awareness that PFAS is accumulating in wildlife, and particularly as we go up to different levels in the food chain.”
Dr Nicholas Chartres, of the University of Sydney, called on the government to follow the lead of European countries that have backed a broad ban of PFAS chemicals. Phasing out specific PFAS chemicals had led to “similarly hazardous replacements” for which the health effects were poorly researched, he said. “We need to ban them as a class.”
PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are found in a wide variety of household and industrial products. The more than 14,000 compounds are difficult to break down and persist in the environment for long periods.
Authorities investigating the source of PFAS that contaminated two dams in the Blue Mountains are close to releasing its preliminary findings, including potential links to a 1992 petrol tanker crash, the inquiry heard.
Last year, WaterNSW disconnected Medlow Dam and Greaves Creek Dam from the Blue Mountains water supply system after elevated levels of PFAS – often called “forever chemicals” – were detected in untreated water.
Jon Dee, of the Stop PFAS action group, said that since the initial detection NSW government agencies still had not informed residents where and when the original contamination occurred.
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“Importantly, they have not told us at what levels we have been drinking PFAS chemicals in our drinking water since the first contamination took place,” he said.
Dee suggested that the PFAS had originated from “vast quantities” of firefighting foam used to put out a petrol tanker which caught fire in 1992 at Medlow Bath. The incident took place close to local waterways.
The executive manager at WaterNSW, Fiona Smith, told the inquiry the statutory body was investigating the source of PFAS contamination, including possible links to the tanker crash.
“We’ve collected over 250 samples from 37 different locations within that catchment. We are getting close to finalising the preliminary phase of that investigation, and once we have done that then we would seek to make that information available to the public,” she said.
Experts debated whether Australia should adopt US limits for PFAS in revised drinking water guidelines set to be finalised later in the year. From 1 July, three specific PFAS chemicals – PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS – will be banned from import and use in Australia.
“The US [Environmental Protection Agency] has done an extraordinary evaluation of the evidence on this, and we should be adopting their values because they are far more health protective,” Chartres told the hearing.
But water expert Prof Stuart Khan, also of the University of Sydney, disagreed, taking issue with “the idea that the US EPA is some sort of shining light that we should all look to for effective management of PFAS”.
“PFAS was developed, produced initially in the US, contaminated the US – very, very significantly in some areas – and that contamination spread to the rest of the world under the watch of the Environmental Protection Agency,” Khan said.
He said the US EPA’s approach to risk assessment in drinking water guidelines differed from that approach taken by the World Health Organization, Europe and Australia, which uses a “tolerable level of risk” model.
PFOA, a compound used to make Teflon, was classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a human carcinogen in December 2023, while PFOS – formerly the key ingredient in Scotchgard – was classified as “possibly” carcinogenic.
New guidelines to be finalised later in 2025 propose decreasing the limit for PFOS in drinking water in line with US guidelines, while the Australian levels of PFOA would remain than higher US limits.
The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), which is revising the drinking water guidelines, defended not adopting US limits for some PFAS chemicals.
“Ultimately it comes down to the health evidence, and what our local advisory committee advises us is the most certain evidence to base the guideline values on,” Kristal Jackson, a director at the NHMRC, told the hearing.
The inquiry is examining sources of contamination and the effectiveness of current regulations, along with the social, economic, health and environmental effects.
