In late June, the National Health and Medical Research Council set new guidelines for PFAS chemicals in the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG). The old PFAS guidelines, established 8 years ago have been substantially reduced. PFOS has had its guideline reduced to 8ng/L (0.008µg/L), PFHxS to 30ng/L (0.03µg/L) and PFOA to 200ng/L (0.2µg/L). A new guideline for PFBS has been set at 1000ng/L (1µg/L) but no guideline could be established for GenX chemicals.

The 2017 ADWG's for PFOS+PFHxS were 70ng/L (0.07µg/L) and PFOA at 560ng/L (0.56µg/L). In 2016 guidelines for PFOS were 500ng/L (0.5µg/L) and 5000ng/L (5µg/L) for PFOA.

Friends of the Earth has created a large database of PFAS chemical detections. In light of the new guidelines, the table (below) has been established to compile a list of Australian communities that have been exposed to PFAS levels above the new guideline levels. 

The key areas where average PFOS detections have exceeded the new guideline of 0.008µg/L, sometime over the past decade, are Avalon Airport Vic, Norfolk Island, Svensson Heights, Bundaberg Qld, Warialda NSW, Batchelor NT, Ayr Qld, Macknade Qld, Lucinda Qld, Katherine NT, Alva Beach Qld, Tarcutta NSW and Pine Creek NT.

Other key impacted communities where PFAS chemicals initially breached the new guideline levels include Narrabri NSW (2024), Katoomba NSW (2024) and Blackheath NSW (2024).  Around 73,000 Australians would have been exposed to PFAS chemicals above the 2025 guideline levels, with many probably exposed to these levels for years and possibly decades. The largest population centres being The Blue Mountains NSW (41,000), Ayr (Qld) (10,000), Katherine NT (10,000), Narrabri NSW (5,500) and Svennson Heights, Bundaberg Qld (3,330). These five account for ~95% of the population exposed to PFAS chemicals in their drinking water >0.008µg/L.

Bore and water supply location breaches to PFOS: 72? (some detections did not differentiate between PFOS/PFHxS)

Bore and water supply location breaches to PFHxS: 26?(some detections did not differentiate between PFOS/PFHxS)

Bore and water supply location breaches to PFOA: 1

Bore and water supply location breaches to PFBS: 0

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The table does not highlight issues concerning PFAS contaminated bore water from unreticulated water supplies. Some communities have been exposed to excessively high PFAS loads with some of the bores used for drinking water, garden use and bathing etc.  Drinking from bore water in these scenarios have not been included in the following table and some individual houses at these locations would have been exposed to very high PFAS levels.  These locations include: Williamtown (NSW), Oakey (Qld), Uralla North/Katherine (NT), Wreck Bay (NSW) Bullsbrook (WA). For more information on these locations please refer to this blog. 

PFAS Tap testing does not regularly occur in almost all water jurisdictions. Can PFAS levels increase in some locations after water treatment? Water authorities generally only test raw water or water at water treatment plants. If PFAS loads are high in raw water that will generally mean that PFAS testing in tap water will occur in designated locations throughout the distribution network.

PFAS has been found in the blood of most Australians. If drinking water is not the major source of PFAS in the blood across the country, then where is the bulk of the PFAS coming from?

Avalon Airport is located about 16km north east of Geelong's CBD. Workers, including fire fighters, air traffic controllers and others including tenants using the facilities in the north eastern area of Avalon were exposed to excessively high levels of PFAS for possibly many years. Avalon is managed by Avalon Airport Australia Pty Ltd who lease the property from the Commonwealth. AirServices Australia lease parts of the airport impacted by PFAS. Drinking water to the airports boundary was the responsibility of Barwon Water (but not within the airport boundary). It appears that two different pipelines connected the terminal and other facilities. No detections in terminal drinking water supplies could be located by FoE. Avalon is currently under investigation by the EPA. 

Svensson Heights in south western Bundaberg is located <2km from Bundaberg Airport. Thousands of residents at Svensson Heights would be have been exposed to PFAS chemicals up to 2018. The groundwater plume from airport is moving in a north easterly direction impacting on bores near the cities centre.

In regards to the table, Red indicates the highest levels of PFAS detected during first sampling, indicating that PFAS pollution may have been occurring in this water supply for some time, even decades. 

In some locations, PFAS detections reached highest levels after testing had been ongoing, probably indicating the slow spread of PFAS tainted groundwater.

Blue text highlights water in the reticulated system and tap water. It should also be noted that PFAS tainted bore water can in some localities be mixed with non-PFAS tainted water, thereby lowering the amount of PFAS. Some water treatment processes may also reduce PFAS detections.

There will also be locations around Australia which may have higher averages than some of the communities near the bottom of this list. These have not been included in the table due to no detections being in breach of the new guideline levels. Once detected in a water supply, PFAS average levels generally decrease with time, as water authorities attempt to find solutions to the pollution problem including the construction of new water treatment plants.

This table will be updated as new information comes to hand.