Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in UK drinking water
Summary of contents
PFAS are vitally important in life-saving medical devices, our everyday electronic devices, aerospace, fire-fighting foams, weatherproof gear, non-stick cookware and many other consumer product applications and industrial processes that serve to grow the economies of the world and improve our quality of life.
However, there is increasing global concern surrounding this group of chemicals, due to their persistence in the environment over decades, bioaccumulative nature in humans and wildlife, highly mobility, and the health hazards some PFAS have been shown to pose to humans and other animals. Understanding the true risks of adverse effects relies on having good estimates or measures of human and wildlife exposure to PFAS.
Ingesting contaminated drinking water is one of the main pathways by which humans can become exposed to PFAS (Sunderland et al., 2018; Ambaye et al., 2022). Therefore, the presence, detection and remediation of PFAS present in water sources are topics of high importance in national and global chemicals policy. There is limited information on the qualitative and quantitative presence of PFAS in sources of drinking water across the UK, but the data that does exist gives rise to genuine concern.
The analytical methods for detecting individual and total PFAS are not yet standardised, and data are difficult to compare across regions. A range of remediation technologies exist for purifying water but the effectiveness of remediation processes for removing PFAS from water has not been thoroughly investigated.
To highlight and begin to address these gaps in knowledge, the Royal Society of Chemistry has commissioned and undertaken an analysis of currently available PFAS monitoring data for the UK, a review of the scientific literature on the presence, detection and remediation of PFAS, and reports from relevant authorities to determine the answers to three key questions:
- Presence: to what extent are PFAS present in sources of UK water?
- Detection: what analytical methods exist for detecting PFAS in water?
- Remediation: what remediation methods exist for the removal of PFAS from water?
This report brings together this information in one place, with the aim of contributing to a sound evidence base to inform future policy and decision making on this important class of chemicals.