Squiz Shortcuts - Forever chemicals

Your Shortcut to forever chemicals

There’s been a fair bit of concern recently after certain types of chemicals were found in a dam that feeds into the water supply of the NSW Blue Mountains. That’s because, in large enough doses, they can be harmful to humans and even cause cancer… So in this Squiz Shortcut, we’ll explain: 

• what forever chemicals are

• where they’ve been found

• and what health and environmental impacts they can have.

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What are forever chemicals?
They’re a group of chemicals that are used to make things that are heat-resistant and grease-resistant. They’ve been in the news lately, but they’ve actually been used in common household products since the 1950s.

What sort of products?
In the home, they’re most commonly found in the nonstick coating on frying pans, saucepans, and bakeware. They’re also in cosmetics like lipsticks, nail polishes, moisturisers, hair products, and some sunscreens. They’re also used to make waterproof clothing and stain-resistant carpets.  

What about outside of the home?
Industrially, forever chemicals have mostly been used in firefighting foam, where their resistance to heat, oil and water is really useful for putting out fires. As a result, they’ve been used widely throughout the world for decades…

What’s their real name?
Their scientific name is perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl chemicals, which are shortened to PFAS. There are nearly 15,000 varieties, and the notable thing about them is the strength of their linked atoms. It means not much gets through them. 

What do PFAS do? 
They’re really good at making things shiny, tough and durable because of their strong chemical bonds. But on the flip side, it means the products they’re used in don’t break down naturally in the environment. And if they’re washed into rivers and creeks, PFAS can travel long distances without dissolving, so they can become widespread and toxic for animals that drink that water. Traces of them have even been found in the blood of seals in Antarctica…

Are they harmful to humans?
They can be, because when humans ingest PFAS - they stay in our bodies for, you guessed it, forever… And because of our exposure to them in all the products we mentioned above, most of us will have low levels of PFAS in our bodies. There’s a lot of research still being carried out on these chemicals around the world, as well as here in Australia - and so far the studies have found that low levels in people are considered to be ok. It’s when they build up in people’s systems after repeated exposure to high levels that they’ve been linked to diseases.

Where could that happen?
High levels of PFAS have been found at airports, defence bases, and firefighting training centres, so people living around those places could have been exposed to high amounts in the air and soil.

What sorts of health issues have PFAS been linked to?
Type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, liver damage, as well as thyroid, kidney and testicular cancers. And studies in the US have also linked PFAS to delays in puberty in girls, reduced bone density, hypertension in pregnant women, and in some cases, infertility. 

How do they get into our bodies?
Mostly through drinking contaminated water, eating crops grown with that water source, or breathing in contaminated soil or dust. 

What’s being done to limit our exposure to PFAS?
In 2020, PFAS were added to the list of banned chemicals under the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants - an agreement initially signed by 186 countries back in 2001. Australia is part of that agreement but we haven’t yet signed the updated version that includes PFAS.  

What’s the hold-up?
Our government says we can’t sign it until we meet the necessary standards of committing to phasing them out completely. A parliamentary inquiry is currently looking into their impacts, and that’s due to hand down a report by August 2025. In the meantime, Australia will ban the use of 3 PFAS that have been found to be carcinogenic starting next year. 

Have there been any famous legal cases involving PFAS?
Yep. Squizers might have seen the movie Dark Waters starring Mark Ruffalo and Anne Hathaway. It’s based on the true story of US lawyer Robert Bilott who took on the huge manufacturing company DuPont in the late 90s/early 2000s over the illegal dumping of harmful PFAS chemicals into farmland in West Virginia.

What does DuPont make?
DuPont manufactures Teflon, the nonstick coating on cookware that is also used in stain-resistant carpets. The company was held liable for PFAS-laden waste leaking into local farms and waterways, killing surrounding livestock and crops. That waste was found by the courts to have caused cancer and other ailments in 3,500 local residents, resulting in the company paying out more than US$1.1 billion in compensation to claimants.

Should I throw out my Teflon pots and pans?
Not so fast… DuPont used a particular PFAS variant called PFOS in the manufacturing process - which was supplied by another big company, 3M - and it’s the waste from that process that was dumped. PFOS has been found to be carcinogenic in high levels but it isn’t in the final Teflon product. The US and our governments say while there are some PFAS in Teflon, they’re not the harmful ones.

Why are the ones in Teflon safe?
It’s true that cooking with nonstick frying pans over extremely high heat could cause the coating to deteriorate and release PFAS into the air, but you’d need to be doing that a lot for it to have an impact. And even then, the type of PFAS molecules in Teflon has been deemed too large to be absorbed by humans, so our regulators don’t consider it dangerous - meaning it won’t be banned anytime soon.

Have there been any PFAS contamination cases in Australia?
Yep, in 2020, a class action lawsuit against the Department of Defence by landowners in the towns of Katherine and Oakley in WA, and Williamtown in NSW, settled for more than $215 million. And a further $132.7 million was paid to 30,000 residents living near military bases. 

Why have forever chemicals been in the news recently?
In June, residents in Mullumbimby in Northern NSW were warned not to eat homegrown produce after PFAS were found in soil near the fire station. And in the past 2 weeks, elevated levels of the chemicals were found in Medlow Dam which feeds into the drinking water supply of the NSW Blue Mountains. That dam has been disconnected from the water supply while WaterNSW investigates how the chemicals got there.

So is my tap water safe to drink?
WaterNSW has assured the Blue Mountains community and everyone in the wider Sydney area that their tap water is safe for drinking. They say that water from the Medlow Dam would have been diluted with water from other feeder dams in the area and then treated by a filtration system, bringing the PFAS levels right down. Before you rush to stock up on bottled water, research shows PFAS have also been found, and home filtration systems aren’t able to filter them completely out either. 

Is there a safe level of PFAS in drinking water?
The Australian standard for PFAS in drinking water is a maximum of 70 parts per trillion. But some experts believe that’s too high and out of date, given the US has recently passed laws to enforce a maximum level of just 4 parts per trillion - nearly 20 times lower than ours. After finding that PFAS is in the blood of 99% of Americans, US authorities have taken the view that “there’s no safe levels of PFAS in drinking water.” 

What’s our government’s stance?
Our federal government’s formal advice on PFAS is that “There is currently limited evidence of human disease or other clinically significant harm resulting from PFAS exposure”. That view was formed after an expert health panel conducted a report into PFAS published in 2018 which was updated in June this year. But our drinking water guidelines are currently under review and the findings are due next year. 

Newsmakers on the people behind the headlines

Last week, Newsmakers host Kate Watson sat down with Leigh Sales - she’s ABC’s former 7.30 anchor and now host of their new show The Assembly. They talk about everything from her career as a journalist, her research into grief, her side hustle Chat 10 Looks 3, to who she is outside of her career. There is something for everyone in this interview, so we reckon you'll enjoy it. Dive into the YouTube interview here.

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