Water & Wastewater Asia March/April 2021

WATER & WASTEWATER ASIA | MARCH/APRIL 2021
PFAS: IT’S EVERYWHERE
PFOS and PFOA were listed in the Stockholm
Convention as Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) in 2009 and 2019
respectively, and have been banned by an
increasing number of countries. However,
studies conducted over the past decade
have shown that these substances are
frequently detected in drinking water
around the world, in countries including
the US, Japan, Ghana, Turkey, Australia
and China.
An increased understanding of the effects
PFAS exposure can have on human health
has led to stricter regulation in several
countries: In 2016, the US Environmental
Protection Agency published a nonenforceable
70 ng/L health advisory (HA)
for the sum of PFOA and PFOS.
Territories including Denmark, Canada,
Sweden, Australia, Germany and Italy
have also been proposing their own
regulatory guidelines for PFAS since
2006, and the end of 2015 saw PFOA and
other long-chain PFASs phased out from
the US and Europe.
South and South East Asian countries
including Indonesia, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Thailand and Vietnam have added
PFOS to their global restriction lists after
becoming a Party to the Stockholm
Convention, but other PFASs remain
unregulated.
Similarly, Singapore’s National
Environment Agency (NEA) has listed
PFOA and PFOA-related compounds
as hazardous substances, and has
banned the manufacture, import and
export of PFOA, its salts, PFOA-related
compounds, and other products
containing these substances as of 12
February 2020.
However, not everyone is out of the
danger zone just yet.
ENTER THE DRAGON
Certain PFASs may have been phased
out in North America and Europe,
but what this has meant is that other
parts of the world have picked up
the manufacturing and production of
these substances. Following a rapid
increase in PFAS production and
usage in China over the past 20 years,
it is no exaggeration to say that China
currently stands as one of the largest
manufacturers and consumers of
PFASs in the world.
In 2019, a study published in
Environment International suggested
that China could adopt health advisory
values of 85 ng/L for PFOA and 47
ng/L for PFOS, after analysing the
relationship between blood PFAS
Figure 1: Spatial
distribution of PFASs
in drinking water
in China (Liu et al.
2021)
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