Many have heard of the ‘PFAS’ acronym, often as just the latest bogeyman chemical that we should fear and avoid. However, most are unaware of what PFAS chemicals actually are. Are they microplastics? Liquids? Solids? Where do they come from? How are we encountering them, and are they harmful? John Chaumont writes.

These questions lead to a long and complicated story; filled with commercial success, health and safety concerns, scandals, cover-ups, investigations, class-action lawsuits, community-led public action and finally; acknowledgement of liability by manufacturers and government intervention.

Recently, PFAS has come to the forefront of public discourse as a serious public health concern. Since the 1970s, experts and scientists across the globe have warned that PFAS chemicals, at high enough exposure levels, may pose severe harm to human health. Elevated PFAS levels in many human blood samples have shown a correlation to a malady of problems, such as cancer, obesity, birth defects, thyroid conditions, bone marrow effects and immune disorders.

What is PFAS?

Commonly referred to as “forever chemicals”, PFAS stands for perfluoroalkyl and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, an umbrella term for the ever-expanding family of thousands of man-made chemicals containing a bond between fluorine and carbon. PFAS is a wonder product; it is heat, water, grease, dirt, friction and stain resistant, and has high thermal insulating properties and surfactant properties. It is used in a vast array of manufactured products worldwide.

However, PFAS has emerged as one of the most environmentally pervasive and problematic man-made chemicals in history, with traces showing up in humans, animals, plant life, waterways, and remote locations around the globe as far-reaching as the Artic Ocean, Amazon Rainforest and Mt Everest.

This is because PFAS chemicals have a unique set of properties. The carbon-fluorine bond is one of the strongest bonds in chemistry, thus making them incredibly resistant to breaking down. PFAS accumulate in living organisms, building up in the body over time and leading to elevated levels. PFAS are also water-soluble, meaning they can dissolve in and easily enter waterways and catchment areas, ending up in our water supply. They can also travel through soil and air, explaining why they have been found in remote regions all over the world.

Due to its beneficial properties, PFAS is often the secret sauce in a vast number of products. To quote science writer Gabriel Pokpkin from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology: “They’re in the air we breathe, the water we drink, the food we eat and the soil where that food was grown. They’re in our carpets, our cookware, our drinking straws, our cosmetics and our clothes. They’re in medical products, mining chemicals, clean-energy technology and the equipment that manufactures our computer chip”.

Is PFAS harmful?

PFAS has long been a topic of political and scientific debate for many years. In 2017, the Turnbull Government created a PFAS Taskforce to investigate and remediate environmental and health issues caused by PFAS.

“There is also limited to no evidence of human disease or other clinically significant harm resulting from PFAS exposure at this time,” according to the taskforce.

So, why have precautions been put in place by the Australian Government? They advise that the precautions put in place are just that – precautions.

It is worth noting that several class-action lawsuits have been successful in recent years against the Australian Defence Force (ADF), for causing elevated blood levels of PFAS in persons living in close proximity to defence bases, where training was carried out using a PFAS-containing firefighting foam. These lawsuits alleged that exposure caused by the ADF led to, among other things, health effects such as cancer, endocrine disruption, reproductive health issues, thyroid disorders and immune system dysfunction. Several of these successful lawsuits resulted in the ADF paying a combined compensation of more than $366 million, however, no admittance of liability was made by the ADF, nor the Australian Government.

Although PFAS is not (yet) demonstrably proven to be harmful to humans, many health experts and scientists around the world suggest that it is likely that this is so.

It is a fact of life that many of the Australian population already have PFAS in their bloodstream, whether they like it or not. People can be exposed to PFAS through everyday household items (such as carpets, cosmetics, sunscreen and household sprays), food, water, air and skin contact. The Australian Government admits that “most people in Australia (and in many other countries) are likely to have very low levels of PFAS in their bodies.”

So, all the handwringing about preventing PFAS exposure may be a case of too little, too late. It appears that the Australian Government’s efforts are not so much to prevent initial exposure, as to prevent further and more concentrated levels of exposure.

Echoes of asbestos

The story of PFAS has echoes of the dramatic rise and fall of asbestos. From asbestos’ invention in the1920s to the various cover-ups, scandals and class action lawsuits coming into public awareness in the 1970s. Asbestos, once known as the “miracle fibre of the 20^th century”, was later referred to as “devil dust” due to its highly carcinogenic nature.

In Australia to this day, many individuals are still affected by asbestos with current estimates showing that 4,000 people die from asbestos-related disease each year, a number that is triple the annual national road toll.

Much like asbestos, PFAS started as a “miracle product”. It has been used in many applications extensively across the globe since its invention in the 1940s, and has had similar safety and health concerns, cover-ups and scandals starting back in the 1970s.

Its potential health dangers were finally brought into public awareness in the 1990s, despite major American manufacturers ‘3M’ and ‘DuPont’ having knowledge of health effects as early as the 1970s. Such a concern it was in the 1970s, 3M had even been testing and monitoring its’ own employees’ PFAS levels in blood and carrying out animal testing on rats and monkeys. During these tests, 3M scientists found that a relatively low daily dose (4.5 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight) could kill a monkey within weeks. These findings (and others) were kept secret, even from many employees at the company.

PFAS and the plumbing industry

PFAS has already had significant effects on the plumbing industry, having far-reaching effects on both sewage disposal and potable water supply.

Drinking water

In 2018, the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) formally issued guidelines for PFAS limits in drinking water, included in the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG). To date, most council and water supply utilities across the country have abided by and delivered water containing PFAS well under the recommended limits.

However, this may all be about to change. The NHMRC is expected to release revised safety limits to the guidelines, significantly lowering the maximum safe levels of various PFAS allowed in drinking water. This revision is expected to be published by April 2025.

As an example, PFOA (Perfluorooctanoic acid) is proposed to be lowered from 560ng/L (nanograms per litre) to 200ng/L due to recent health concerns over cancer and PFOS (Perfluorooctane sulfonate) is proposed to be lowered from 70ng/L to 4ng/L due to similar concerns over bone marrow effects.

This raises obvious concerns for some water utilities and councils across the country, whose current drinking water supply quality would exceed the proposed PFAS safety limits. This will prove to be an expensive and unavoidable problem for many.

Take, for example, Blackheath in the Blue Mountains (NSW), where Sydney Water has fought to lower PFOS in drinking water supply to the new safety level of 4ng/L. After detecting unsafe levels of PFAS in the drinking water supply, monitoring and treatment took place all throughout 2024; with test results as recently as late November 2024 returning PFOS levels that would have doubled the newly proposed safety limits. These levels were finally brought under control at the beginning of 2025 – Achieved by closing the pipe supply from Medlow Dam (a supply catchment to the area) and the installation of a $3.4 million PFAS treatment system.

In addition to impacts on public infrastructure, more public dialogue about PFAS has led to an increasing private demand for at-home filters (activated carbon, ion exchange, and reverse osmosis technologies) to remove remaining traces of PFAS, although the degree of effectiveness of these filters is debated. The NHMRC advises that PFAS are not removed or destroyed by boiling the water.

Wastewater

PFAS in wastewater may come from many different sources and may be present in both domestic and industrial wastewater. Because the presence of PFAS in the environment and population is a result of waste and wastewater disposal, one popular strategy is to adopt the ‘polluter pays principle’, adopted by the Queensland Government, which requires “those who hold stocks or produce PFAS pollution should bear the costs of managing it to prevent damage to human health or the environment.”

The concept of this principle is that, rather than the public footing the bill for PFAS removal projects, manufacturers should be required to partially fund them, thus making it much less attractive for businesses to manufacture products that contain, or result in the disposal of PFAS.

Presently there is currently no simple, small-scale pre-treatment device that could be adopted and used in a trade waste agreement with a wastewater network operator. Therefore, there are no current requirements for businesses to monitor and treat PFAS in their own wastewater discharge. Watch this space though, as it would come as little surprise if such requirements were put into place.

Currently, if PFAS needed to be monitored and treated in municipal wastewater, this would be done at the region’s municipal wastewater treatment plant.

Can PFAS be removed from drinking and wastewater?

The PFAS National Environmental Management Plan (January 2018) advises that wastewater can be treated in a variety of ways, using similar processes as PFAS water treatment. Currently available processes include activated granular carbon treatment, reverse osmosis and nanofiltration, foam fractionation, sonochemistry and electrochemical oxidation.

Large-scale waste and wastewater treatment companies offer PFAS removal treatment for both potable water and wastewater, and this industry is only expected to grow.

Summary

PFAS is a problem that is likely to dominate public discourse in the coming years. This will impact the plumbing industry, which must remain abreast of solutions to a problem that is not going away. Rather than a case of ‘too-little-too-late’, we must continue to seek solutions to limit further exposure to the public and provide sound advice to Government bodies who legislate this matter, and to other industries who continue to use these harmful chemicals.