Acceptable levels of “forever chemicals” in drinking water should be reduced tenfold and a new national chemicals agency created to protect public health, the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) has told the UK government.
The chartered body wants to see a reduction in the cap on levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in tap water. PFAS are a family of about 10,000 widely used chemicals that do not break down easily in the environment. Some have been linked to cancers, liver and thyroid disease, immune and fertility problems, and developmental defects in unborn children.
The current limit in UK drinking water, which is a guideline and not a statutory cap, is 100 nanograms a litre for individual PFAS. The RSC wants this reduced to 10ng/l and a new overall limit introduced of 100ng/l for a wider range of PFAS in drinking water.
“In the Drinking Water Inspectorate’s (DWI) own words, levels above 10ng/l pose a medium or high risk to public health,” said Stephanie Metzger, a policy adviser at the RSC. “We’re seeing more studies that link PFAS to a range of very serious medical conditions, and so we urgently need a new approach for the sake of public health.”
The RSC has produced a map using data published in the Guardian with Watershed Investigations in February, revealing that a “third of the watercourses tested contain medium- or high-risk levels of PFAS, according to the DWI’s own classification system”. However, the DWI’s classifications only apply to treated tap water, and the water bodies on the RSC’s map are not all drinking water sources.
Cutting the limit would bring the UK into closer alignment with the EU’s stricter limit of 100ng/l for the sum of 20 specific PFAS and 500ng/l for total PFAS in drinking water. However, some member states are taking this even further, with Denmark setting a limit of just 2ng/l for four individual PFAS and some countries such as Sweden and Germany considering reducing limits for specific PFAS to 4ng/l over time. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed dropping limits on two widely used PFAS, PFOS and PFOA, to 4ng/l.
Oliver Loebel, the secretary general of EurEau, the European Federation of National Associations of Water Services, said he thought the UK would “likely act to bring its drinking water limits down sooner or later, depending on public pressure”.
For Loebel, the answer is in “controlling PFAS at its source” through stronger regulation of use and manufacturing, rather than trying to clean it up once it is in the environment. “Removing PFAS from drinking water and wastewater is an environmental disaster because it is very energy-, resource- and cost-intensive, and it will add to tariffs,” he said. The EU is considering universal restrictions, regulating all 10,000 or so PFAS as one class, but this is not being looked at in the UK.
The charity Chem Trust’s head of advocacy, Dr Anna Watson, backs a reduction in the cap but said it “won’t magically reduce the levels of PFAS in drinking water overnight”. She wants the government to “restrict the use and production of all PFAS” and for water treatment facilities to be “upgraded to filter out as much PFAS as possible”. Any costs “should not be borne by UK taxpayers but by the producers of the PFAS pollution,” she added.
The RSC is also calling for a national inventory of PFAS, stricter limits on PFAS in industrial discharges and a new national chemicals agency “to provide better strategic coordination”. It said a “lack of cohesion among government departments and agencies is a major barrier to effective chemicals regulation in the UK”.
The chief inspector of the DWI, Marcus Rink, said he “expects [water] companies to be developing strategies for investigating the extent of sources of PFAS in their catchments, raw and final water and developing strategies that detail trigger levels and actions required to reduce the risk of PFAS in drinking water”.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said drinking water standards in England were of “an exceptionally high standard and are among the best in the world. Water companies are required to carry out regular risk assessments and sampling for any substance – including PFAS – that they believe may cause the water supply to pose a risk to human health.
“Work is continuing across government to help us assess levels of PFAS occurring in the environment, their sources and potential risks to inform future policy and regulatory approaches.”
Water UK, the industry body, said: “Companies adhere to high standards set by regulators, with virtually all samples meeting their strict tests.”
