In August, the Australian government announced a national inquiry into the dangers of ‘forever chemicals’.

These chemicals are the “asbestos of the 21st century, just far more prevalent and far less understood”, says Senator Lidia Thorpe, who is chairing the inquiry.

Forever chemicals are formally known as per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS).

PFAS has been used for 80 years to make non-stick cookware, water-repellent clothing, stain-resistant fabrics and carpets, some cosmetics and some firefighting foams. The first of these, invented in 1938, was Teflon.

Exposure to PFAS has been linked to cancers and weakened immune systems among children. There is also evidence of links to liver damage, decreased fertility, and an increased risk of asthma and thyroid disease.

But those associations aren’t proof that PFAS cause these illnesses in humans.

PFAS get the ‘forever’ tag because they don’t break down in the environment or in our bodies. They’re often described as virtually indestructible, and they travel long distances in water and on air currents.

You’re likely to have PFAS in your blood.

Reason for the inquiry

The inquiry was announced a few days after Sydney Water detected PFAS in the city’s drinking water supply.

But pressure for an inquiry has been building for some time. In June 2023, The Sydney Morning Herald called for a royal commission into the “‘forever chemicals’ scandal”.

This was on the back of a prolonged investigative campaign that unearthed revelations of cancer clusters and long-standing cover-ups by manufacturers and government bodies.

The SMH praised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese because he was the first Australian leader to be concerned about the health effects of PFAS.

Actually, the federal and state governments have been quietly running information campaigns for years.

What’s the government doing?

The Australian Government’s Expert Health Panel for PFAS found that “although the scientific evidence in humans is limited, reviews and scientific research to date have provided fairly consistent reports of an association with several health effects”.

The health effects reported in these associations are generally small and within normal ranges for the whole population.

The panel found “limited to no evidence of human disease or other clinically significant harm resulting from PFAS exposure at this time”.

The panel noted that “studies on laboratory animals have shown adverse effects of chronic PFAS exposure on the liver, gastro-intestinal tract and thyroid hormones”.

However, “the applicability of these studies to humans is not well established”.

In August 2023, the federal government said it intended to stop the import, manufacture and use of PFAS engineered stone bench tops within two years (by 2025).

Some perspective

The greater risk from PFAS is in contaminated water, rather than products containing the chemicals.

A helpful article at The Conversation from ANU researchers advises that “to understand the risks of PFAS in drinking water, it’s important to differentiate between background contamination and local contamination”.

Local contamination is the worry. It includes “legacy contamination from aqueous firefighting foam and industrial manufacturing pollution”.

This pollution “is often mainly confined to local areas and often has higher concentrations of contaminants”.

Background contamination is related to exposure to everyday products containing PFAS, such as cookware, carpets, masks and makeup.

The general public’s exposure to background PFAS contamination differs from the risks of heavily contaminated communities.

For example, “the mean concentration of PFOS in the blood of Australian firefighters during 2018–2019 was 27 nanograms per millilitre”.

This is because of the presence of PFOS in firefighting foam.

The researchers say these “are relatively high figures compared to the concentration of PFOA in Sydney’s water: 0.1 nanograms per litre”.

So, the water’s safe to drink?

A University of NSW-led international study, published in April, found that much of our global source water exceeds PFAS safe drinking limits.

Senior author of the study, UNSW Engineering Professor Denis O’Carroll, said: “We already knew that PFAS are pervasive in the environment, but I was surprised to find out the large fraction of source waters that are above drinking water advisory recommendations.”

The study also found high concentrations of PFAS in Australia, “with many locations above recommended drinking water levels”.

But, this “tended to be in areas where firefighting foams had been used in the past, such as military institutions and fire-training facilities”.

O’Carroll stressed that these PFAS traces “are found in source water, such as dams, and not drinking water itself”.

Drinking water, he said, goes through treatment plants, some of which are designed to reduce the amount of chemicals such as PFAS in our water before it comes out of the tap.

However, Sydney Water – and other water companies – “don’t routinely measure the broad range of PFAS potentially in our drinking water”.

Still, O’Carroll advised: “Drinking water is largely safe, and I don’t hesitate drinking it … But I certainly think that monitoring PFAS levels and making the data easily available is worthwhile.”