You’ve probably heard about PFAS - a collection of more than 14,000 chemicals that don’t break down and can accumulate in the environment and people. Some PFAS chemicals have been associated with higher risk of cancer, and it's been all over the news lately after being found in drinking water across Australia. The latest is that Independent Senator Lidia Thorpe has announced a Senate Inquiry into the issue will commence in 2025.
Unknown to many, Friends of the Earth has been working tirelessly in an unfunded capacity mapping PFAS contamination for the past 6 years.
As early as 2018, with the help of DVIZE, Friends of the Earth volunteers created the Australian PFAS Map as a means of highlighting the contamination of multiple sites across Australia with PFAS chemicals.
Our PFAS map is having a big impact. Over 50,000 people have used the PFAS map over the past couple of months. Even the Murdoch Press are now using an image of the PFAS map to highlight the extent of the problem.
How is it that it is left to volunteers to highlight the toxic issue of our generation?
SUPPORT OUR VOLUNTEERS TO CONTINUE TO DO THIS IMPORTANT WORK
A blog published by Friends of the Earth in May 2024 is one of the only ways that residents have found out that their water supplies have been contaminated.
Do you know that the most viewed blog post from FoE Australlia in 2024 is PFAS in drinking water?
READ THE BLOG HERE
Numerous other blog posts have been published by FoE concerning drinking water and PFAS from waste water treatment plants. Some of the issues still haven’t been reported on in mainstream media.
FoE Campaigner and volunteer Anthony Amis in the Age Newspaper on June 11 2024. The Fairfax press published a front page story on PFAS, which a large portion of the information sourced from this work. Photo credit to Wayne Taylor.
The PFAS map is actually the third such map created by FoE volunteers to highlight toxic pollution in our lands and waterways. The first map was the Australian Pesticides Map, which tracks the use of hundreds of toxic pesticides across the continent, followed by the Australian Drinking Water Map, tracking drinking water contamination.
Each of the maps gives us a profound understanding of the issues at hand. They keep track of where contamination has been found, and the myriad of issues concerning PFAS, Pesticides and Drinking Water. They empower local communities and they also get under corporations and government’s skin, showing that the problem is much wider and more serious than has been reported.
Creating and maintaining the accuracy of these maps requires a huge amount of diligent and time consuming work from volunteers, including research, citizen science, web development, communications and more.
Can you support these volunteers with a donation today?
It's now been found that pesticides are a major source of PFAS pollution, an issue which Friends of the Earth will be working on in the next couple of months.
We hope you can consider donating to our cutting edge, grassroots and crucial PFAS and Pesticide work.