Potable/Drinking Water Quality

Potable/Drinking Water Quality Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) testing

Moree Plains Shire Council recently participated in the NSW Health-arranged per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) screening for local drinking water supplies. PFAS chemicals—or per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances—are synthetic chemicals found in many everyday products. They have been widely used in many industrial and consumer applications as they are effective at resisting heat, stains, grease, and water.

The Australian Drinking Water Guidelines (ADWG) have set values for the amount of PFAS in drinking water that a person can consume on a daily basis over a lifetime without any appreciable risk to health. The National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&RMC) has stated that drinking water supplies that comply with the current ADWG are safe to drink.

On 26 November 2024, Council conducted a sampling of treated water from the Shire’s drinking water supply systems in screening for the PFAS suite of chemicals.

The analysis confirmed that all PFAS analytes for Moree Plains Shire drinking water supply were below the limits of detection, indicating that Moree Plains Shire drinking water meets both the current Australian Drinking Water Guidelines for PFAS chemicals and the recently released values in the draft NH&MRC fact sheet, as indicated in the table below:

 Characteristic  Current        ADWG value* Proposed ADWG value* Moree Plains Water Supply Systems Sample Results  Meeting ADWG value (%)  Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)  0.560 µg/L  560 ng/L  0.2 µg/L  200 ng/L  0.001 µg/L  1 ng/L  100%  Perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS)  

Sum of PFOS and PFHxS

0.07 µg/L

70 ng/L   0.004 µg/L  4 ng/L  0.001 µg/L  1 ng/L  100%  Perfluorohexane sulfonic acid (PFHxS)  0.03 µg/L  30 ng/L  0.001 µg/L  1 ng/L  100%  Perfluorobutane sulfonic acid (PFBS)  No current guideline value 1 µg/L  1000 ng/L  0.001 µg/L  1 ng/L  100%

*Units: microgram per litre (µg/L), nanogram per litre (ng/L)