Aussie drinking water standards an ‘international embarrassment’ according to PFAS expert

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Aussie drinking water standards an ‘international embarrassment’ according to PFAS expert

Australia’s drinking water is contaminated with “forever chemicals” and the nation’s regulatory

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guidelines are “an international embarrassment,” one expert has told 7NEWS.com.au.

Her scathing assessment comes just months after the US introduced a new national standard requiring water providers to filter out PFAS chemicals linked to a range of deadly conditions.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Water safety expert shares fears about *********** tap water.

PFAS — per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — is the name given to a group of more than 14,000 chemicals currently found in countless popular products, and now in 50 per cent of the world’s source water, one

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published in Nature said.

They never completely break down because of their “carbon-fluorine bond” and have even been found in human bloodstreams and ******* milk.

The forever chemicals have been

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by the International Agency for Research on ******* (IARC), and

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, adverse reproductive and developmental outcomes, altered hormone production, altered immune and thyroid function, and liver and kidney ********.

But comprehensive testing of water for all PFAS is not required by the government-issued guidelines in Australia.

In terms of PFAS water testing, *********** water providers only test for the three individual PFAS chemicals outlined in the guidelines.

And Water Services Australia executive director Adam Lovell told Sunrise that testing regularity is based on a health authority “risk” assessment of how likely those chemicals are to be in the water.

Lovell said *********** tap water is safe and people should feel confident drinking it — but those views are not shared by everyone looking closely at the precious resource.

“I just want to hang my head in shame,” International Pollutants Elimination Network senior policy adviser Mariann Lloyd-Smith, who has 45 years experience working with PFAS and toxic chemicals, told 7NEWS.com.au.

“Our international colleagues just can’t believe it. They are astounded that Australia has taken such a lackadaisical attitude and that, after all the research we’ve got, the *********** government still claims there’s no evidence of harm from these chemicals.

“I can’t explain where that (attitude) comes from in the *********** regulatory psyche.

“What makes *********** governments so reluctant to act and protect their communities? I don’t have an answer for that.”

Most Aussies have ‘PFAS in their bodies’

PFAS are found in almost everything — such as non-stick cookware, carpets, Band-Aids, makeup products, paint, and even tea bags.

It would be impossible for the average *********** to avoid them.

Because of this, the

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says: “Most people in Australia … are likely to have very low levels of PFAS in their bodies.”

But it claims these levels are not dangerous, unlike the levels found around sites where the chemicals have been released in larger amounts such defence bases and where firefighting foams containing PFAS have been used.

A firefighting training centre in Fiskville, Victoria, was shut down in 2015 when it became the first PFAS-contaminated site to be publicly identified, Lloyd-Smith said.

“A farmer adjacent to the site was forced to cease selling animal produce after PFAS was found in the soil and sheep,” Lloyd-Smith said.

“High levels were also found in the farmer’s blood and that of his children.”

By 2024, the NSW EPA had detected a total of 54 contaminated sites in that state alone, Lloyd-Smith said.

She said areas around airports including Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Gold Coast, Tamworth, and Darwin have all been highly contaminated.

She also noted one

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that found higher ******* rates for people who lived around known PFAS contamination sites.

Aussie standards now under review

The

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, developed by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), were last updated in 2018, but Lloyd-Smith said the evidence of harm related to PFAS was known to the government even then.

These guideline values are based on the tolerable daily amount of the chemicals deemed safe to consume according to Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), the Department of Health told 7NEWS.com.au.

But those levels of human tolerance to PFAS are contested globally.

Australia’s “

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” is 280 times more than the amount deemed safe by the ********* Food Safety Authority (

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), Lloyd-Smith said.

Camera IconGlobal map of concentration of 20 PFAS from samples of surface water, groundwater and drinking water samples. Credit: Nature

The *********** standards are now under review, with advice from the NHMRC Water Quality Advisory Committee, “to determine whether the current NHMRC advice ******** appropriate,” the Department of Health told 7NEWS.com.au.

It confirmed updated guidance is not expected until April 2025, following public consultation in October 2024.

But Lloyd-Smith said the research behind the US’s new standards was “rigorous” — and repeating that process here would be wasting time.

‘Just adopt the US standards’

The new US water standards are not the most stringent globally but adopting them would be the simplest starting point for Australia, Lloyd-Smith said.

Those standards require US water utilities to improve filtration systems to remove five individual “forever chemicals” — PFOA, PFOS, PFNA, PFHxS and HFPO-DA — from the water they deliver to US citizens.

Mixtures of any two or more of PFNA, PFHxS, PFBS and GenX chemicals must also be limited under the guidelines.

Lloyd-Smith said the research behind the recent US regulation “truly was some of the best science, with some of the most rigorous assessments”.

“So, we don’t need to go through that approach again, we could just adopt the US standards straight away,” she said.

“There are more rigorous standards (than the US), for example, the ********* standard because it looks at all PFAS chemicals.”

Canada limits the total amount of all 14,000 PFAS combined to just 30 nanograms per litre (ng/L), while the US allows 4ng/L of the five PFAS it regulates.

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, 70ng/L is the combined limit for PFOS and PFHxS, and 560 ng/L is the limit for PFOA.

The EU limits the total of all 14,000 PFAS to 500ng/L, and for the sum of just 20 specified PFAS it limits the combined total to 100ng/L.

Avoiding regrettable substitution

Considering PFAS chemicals as a group, or class, rather than individually is the important next step “so we don’t spend years assessing one (only) to find the industry has 10 more to replace it, which is exactly what is happening now,” Lloyd-Smith said.

“We call that regrettable substitution, and we’ve been talking about regrettable substitution since about 2009.”

A water regulation that considers the entire class of PFAS chemicals would undoubtably create a lot of work for both government and industry.

“It would put an onus on water companies, and it would put the onus on the government to ensure the products coming in, and the chemicals that we use, do not contain PFAS, and that would help protect some of our water,” Lloyd-Smith said.

“Yes, it will be difficult, but we’ve got to start.”

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#Aussie #drinking #water #standards #international #embarrassment #PFAS #expert

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