High concentrations of PFAS have been found in Australia, including the Central Coast, with many locations above recommended drinking water levels.

 

Our firefighters, the fire agencies in which they serve, the environment and indeed the people of Australia continue to be exposed to PFAS, as well as those communities in close proximity to where the firefighting foam was used, such as the decommissioned Munmorah and Colongra power stations. This toxic legacy continues to take affect well into the future, since PFAS chemicals show no sign of biodegradation at all and so have been described as “forever chemicals.”

Amara Stranded testifies before Minnesota State lawmakers in support of legislation to ban the PFAS group of toxic chemicals.

On April 14 2023, Strande died at age 20, just two days before her 21st birthday and just weeks before lawmakers would pass the legislation now known as 'Amara’s Law', banning the use of PFAS in Minnesota.

 

State Representative Jeff Brand, lead author on legislation, said he was outraged upon learning that these “forever chemicals” had become nearly ubiquitous in people’s bloodstreams.

 

“We had no choice about it,” he said in an interview. “We had no choice to say we don’t want that in our bodies.”

 

Andrea Lovoll, the legislative director of the Minnesota Centre for Environmental Advocacy, said that Strande was key in getting the legislation passed.

 

“The fact is that she dedicated the end of her life to making sure that nobody else suffered from PFAS,” said Lovoll, who had been working to ban PFAS in Minnesota for three years.

 

Decades ago, 3M — then known as Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing — started dumping PFAS waste in pits in Oakdale and other parts of Washington County, according to the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA). That dumping has since resulted in a nearly 200-square-mile underground plume of contaminated groundwater, which by 2004 had tainted drinking water supplies for more than 140,000 residents, the agency said.

 

Testing by the Minnesota Department of Health revealed the company’s waste-handling practices had polluted the aquifer and at least four water wells serving Oakdale.

 

Groundwater investigations and subsequent testing found that PFAS had tainted the taps of several communities, according to the Minnesota Department of Health. As a result, 3M agreed to pay Oakdale $10 million for new water treatment systems to filter PFAS and helped at least one other community with a water service.

 

While numerous studies have linked PFAS chemicals to cancers in laboratory animals, the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States, just like the NSW EPA,  says that “research is still ongoing to determine how different levels of exposure to different PFAS can lead to a variety of health effects.”

 

The NSW EPA have concluded that PFAS has been found on and offsite at the decommissioned Colongra and Munmorah power station sites, yet, when it comes to a human health risk, they say “PFAS are what’s known as an ‘emerging contaminant’.”

 

“It is understood that groundwater is generally moving towards the centre of the Munmorah and Colongra sites, meaning that exposure to PFAS from the groundwater is limited,” the NSW EPA said.

 

“The community can continue to eat seafood caught in the Tuggerah Lakes system, as part of a balanced diet”.

 

Yet the Federal government has warned residents in some communities not to drink from waterways, or to eat fish where PFAS contamination is evident.

 

So, how can the NSW EPA continue to condone the consumption of seafood caught in known PFAS contaminated waterways and explain the high and unprecedented number of cancer cases being diagnosed in the Central Coast’s northern suburbs?

 

Prior to 2018, if not before, the Central Coast community were being told by the NSW EPA that there was no per and poly-fluoroalkyl (PFAS) substances in Lake Munmorah or Colongra Bay, which could cause human health issues. They were told by the Federal Minister for Health in 2018 that there was no evidence to suggest an increase in overall health risks related to PFAS exposure.

 

Earlier this year, however, the community was told by Central Coast Council that the water quality in our lakes was excellent, provided you only swim close to shore.

 

“Like Williamtown to our north, Wreck Bay to our south, towns close to military bases and sites around the United States of America, legal actions have been commenced or are currently being pursued,” said community activist and northern suburbs resident Gary Blaschke.

 

“For close to fifty years on the coast, all power stations used PFAS products as fire-fighting foams. The contamination of groundwater, stormwater, freshwater ponds and water running down the power station canals and into our lakes, is now coming back to haunt us.”

 

Erin Brockovich, a US activist and Shine Lawyer ambassador, says the government is giving the public mixed messages.

 

“Residents [in affected areas] are being told it doesn’t pose a risk to their health but at the same time the government is giving them bottled water,” she said in a statement in 2019. “It’s an extraordinarily confusing message.”

 

In 2023 the State government engaged General Property Management (GPM) to decommission and remediate the former Lake Munmorah power station. GPM recently applied to Central Coast Council for a development application to build a water treatment plant on site. Further investigation has revealed that the water treatment plant was in fact a PFAS treatment plant, which would operate for a further ten years (DP1201414 301 Scenic Drive Colongra 2262).

 

In a ‘Statement of Environmental Effects’ (SEE), GPM stated that “to date, sampling has been limited. The NSW Government considers that further testing is required to determine if PFAS has migrated offsite, and if there are any potential health impacts to the surrounding areas and local community”.

 

Residents living in the Central Coast's northern suburbs near the contaminated areas fear they have unusually higher rates of cancer than elsewhere across the coast. Wyong and its surrounding areas have some of the highest rates of individual cancers including colorectal cancer in men, which was 44 per cent above the state average, and lung cancer at 53 per cent above average for men and 43 per cent in women.

 

It is known, and has been previously reported, PFAS has migrated into the Tuggerah Lakes system. A fact that was not recorded by Central Coast Council in water samplings, yet knowing that the amount of PFAS on the land of the former power station site would take ten years to treat and remediate.

 

Local government, the NSW State government and the NSW EPA have also remained silent about PFAS contamination that has been found on the St Phiilips Christian College development site at Charmhaven.

 

Community activist Mike Campbell, who is well-known for his involvement in preventing coal mining beneath the Central Coast’s major drinking water catchment, said “The application before Council for the development of St Phillips Christian College at Charmhaven, exposed the problem of PFAS being detected on site due to the use of the fire-fighting chemical at the adjacent Rural Fire Service Headquarters over a period of years.”

 

“Experts said that excavation of a large area of land needs to be done to remove PFAS in the area,” he said.

 

The concern that Mr Campbell has, as do many residents living in close proximity to the development site, "is the removal being carried out in a professional and world standard practice?"

 

“Central Coast Council should alert the public to the current status of this remediation and also where the contaminated material is destined,” Mr Campbell said.

 

The 2021 Legislative Council Public Works Committee (now known as the Public Accountability and Works Committee) Inquiry found sixteen recommendations to be conducted in respect of the PFAS contamination at the old power station sites. Recommendation No.6  “that NSW Health immediately undertake an epidemiological assessment of the health of residents near coal ash dams to establish the health impacts of coal ash and publish the findings by 31 December 2022”. To date this report has not been completed along with many of the other recommendations.

 

Gary Blaschke said, “Central Coast Council’s records show that Lake Munmorah takes 520 days to fully circulate its waters. Budgewoi Lake some 460 days and Tuggerah Lakes 220 days. The lakes are not technically lakes, they are simply shallow coastal lagoons, approximately 2.5 metres deep, which are stirred up by storms and wind gusts - effectively stirring-up the sediments and accumulated PFAS in the middle of our lake.”

 

"How can the EPA say that eating fish caught in Lake Munmorah is safe?" said Coast resident Andrew Thomson.

 

"I enjoy a flathead occasionally as a meal - I can just imagine if the 'flathead' was living in Lake Munmorah, it would be skimming along the bottom nibbling away on contaminated PFAS echinoderms and the like. They spend the majority of their life buried in sand or mud."

 

To make the situation worse, Mr Blaschke said that adjoining businesses have had fresh water dams become toxic, possibly by the leaching of toxins from the Vales Point and or Lake Munmorah unlined coal ash dams.

 

“Proposed housing developments for the Doyalson RSL site are potentially sandwiched between the leaching dams, and stormwater and ground water problems, yet the EPA say there is no concern for the public.”

 

Now PFAS has been added to the mix!

 

The Legislative Council Public Works Committee in 2021 commented “the committee agrees with the inquiry participants that little research, if any, has been conducted on the impacts and long term consequences in relation to the health of communities residing near coal ash dams. We are disappointed with the response by the NSW EPA and NSW Health to community concerns about a potential link between the circulation of additional metals in the air and waterways, and impacts on health outcomes for the community. This response, in conjunction with the lack of research conducted to date on this matter, demonstrates a complete disregard by the government towards the health of its citizens.”

 

"Chairperson of the Inquiry was the Hon. Daniel Mookhey MLC, who is now the NSW Treasurer and after many attempts to get a response as to why the sixteen recommendations of the inquiry have not been completed, there is no more than total silence," said local Lake Munmorah resident Gary Blaschke.

 

While Australia’s PFAS limits seem relaxed compared to the US, both countries’ recommended drinking water guidelines pale when compared to Canada: rather than limiting only two or three forms of PFAS in drinking water, Canada tallies up the sum of all 14,000 PFAS and limits the overall number to 30 nanograms per litre.

 

A University of New South Wales-led (UNSW) international study found that 69 per cent of global groundwater samples with no known contamination source exceeded Health Canada’s safe drinking water criteria, while 32 per cent of the same samples exceeded the US’s proposed drinking water hazard index.

 

The study also found that that much of our global source water exceeds PFAS safe drinking limits.

 

Professor Denis O’Carroll, senior author of UNSW study said, “Many of our source waters are above PFAS regulatory limits.”

 

“We already knew that PFAS is pervasive in the environment, but I was surprised to find out the large fraction of source waters that are above drinking water advisory recommendations,” he said.

 

The research team pulled together PFAS measurements from sources around the world, including government reports, databases, and peer-reviewed literature. Altogether, they collated more than 45,000 data points, which span roughly 20 years.

 

It’s the first study to quantify the environmental burden of PFAS on a global scale.

 

In 2023, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared PFOA, a type of PFAS, a category one human carcinogen, which initially raised concerns about 20 years ago. But in Australia, these contaminates are regulated to a limit of 70 nanograms per litre – well above the four nanograms per litre combined PFOS and PFOA limit in the US. But our acceptable levels for PFOA in drinking water is perilously so much higher, creating a recipe for a future health disaster.

 

The problem that we, as a society, are now facing is that PFAS contaminants are still an underestimated risk - its not good enough for the NSW EPA to say "eat the fish from Lake Munmorah", because by their own admission the long-term PFAS impact on human health from consuming contaminated seafood is still unknown. What is known, however, is that these ‘forever chemicals’ do not degrade in the environment, nor do they degrade in the human body.

 

Daniel Mookhey needs to come out of hiding and explain why, after being extremely vocal against PFAS when chair of the Legislative Council Public Works Committee in 2021, he refuses to face his critics about the fact that nothing has been done about the committee’s findings.

 

The Minns Government must also come clean about its forward plan to deal with the PFAS contamination problem – otherwise litigation from community groups, including the Central Coast, will continue to plague this current government as well as future governments.

 

Today, PFAS still contaminates our waterways, which are used for drinking, agriculture, fishing, swimming and other activities. Downplaying the human health risks of PFAS exposure is not an option.

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