There are now calls for urgent testing following of perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) in drinking water and were likely to be carcinogenic. The World Health Organisation’s cancer agency has even gone a step further,classifying PFOA as category one carcinogen.
TheHerald’s award-winning journalist reports that after the Biden administration dramatically lowered its safe limits for drinking water in April following a crusade led by a young woman against forever chemicals,some Australians are likely to have been exposed via suburban drinking water supplies across Sydney and dozens of other locations across Australia.
Testing to date indicates the drinking water supplies of some 1.8 million Australians had been contaminated by forever chemicals. A government-funded 2011 University of Queensland study sampled tap water 34 locations and discovered the chemicals at North Richmond,Quakers Hill,Liverpool,Blacktown,Emu Plains and Campbelltown,along with the NSW regional centres of Bathurst,Wagga Wagga,Lithgow,Gundagai and Yass.
More lately,high-level pollution by the PFOS or PFOA has been found in drinking water in the Sydney suburb of North Richmond,Newcastle and Jervis Bay,Rottnest Island,Norfolk Island and in a string of towns across Victoria,Queensland,Western Australia,the Northern Territory.
Over the same timeframe,as Australian water providers stayed in the dark,the Wall Street giant 3M agreed to pay out a historic to clean up thousands of water supplies across the US,having known about the health risk of its products since the late 1990. Meanwhile,the Australian government had been tied up in court defending lawsuits over use of forever chemicals in a firefighting foam manufactured by 3M;the Department of Defence is already contemplating suing the company,after reaching class action settlements worth $366 million to compensate 11 Australian communities polluted with forever chemicals.
However,the source of the contamination in Australia’s drinking water is unclear as many affected locations are not near Defence sites.
Nicholas Chartres,a senior research fellow from the University of Sydney’s faculty of medicine and health,said Australians should be concerned about potential health effects from any detection of forever chemicals in their drinking water. And Mariann Lloyd-Smith,a toxic chemicals campaigner who has served on United Nations expert committees,slammed it as a “national disgrace” that PFOA is now permitted in Australia’s tap water at 140 times the maximum level the US.
At a press conference on Monday,the NSW premier,health minister and chief medical officer were at pains to stress that Sydney’s water supply is safe from forever chemicals.
The evidence they used to reach that conclusion remains a mystery,given Sydney Water’s insistence as recently as Tuesday that the only site in Sydney where tap water is being monitored is North Richmond,where PFOS has been found exceeding US safe levels.
It’s now 13 years since university researchers first sounded the alarm about the presence of the chemicals in tap water in a string of Sydney suburbs. It’s baffling that authorities do not appear to have pursued those findings. What threat could be more serious than a chemical is so widespread and that NSW Health itself admits is carcinogenic?
To its credit,the NSW government has repeatedly shown willingness to lead on the forever chemicals issue and break ranks with the Commonwealth,first by banning the chemicals and now by siding with the World Health Organisation,US,Europe and the UK in acknowledging the link to serious health effects.
But this week’s revelations present a disturbing picture that Australia is still struggling to get ahead of this crisis,years after it burst onto the scene as a leading worldwide public health issue.
Authorities must act to ensure the trust of consumers is not irrevocably broken and to safeguard Sydney’s drinking water from these insidious poisons.
The first step in that process is to resolve the mystery of how these chemicals have ended up in places like Quakers Hill and Campbelltown. And then,to turn the tap off.
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