A new Private Members Bill calling for legally binding limits on PFAS in drinking water and stronger restrictions overall has been introduced to Parliament by Liberal Democrat MP Munira Wilson.

Yesterday the MP sought leave in the House of Commons to bring in a cross-party Bill to require the Chief Inspector of Drinking Water to issue guidance to water companies on poly and perfluorinated alkyl substances in drinking water.

Better known as “forever chemicals”, PFAS - perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances - are found in thousands of everyday products.

Speaking in the House of Commons, the MP said the chemicals are so long-lasting that scientists have not yet been able reliably to identify how long it might take to break them down.

“Despite all the alarming health risks I have just outlined, there is currently no statutory regulation of PFAS chemicals in England and Wales and no legal limit on the amount of PFAS present in our drinking water.

“There is only guidance that water is “wholesome” and a limit of 0.1 micrograms for only 47 out of the thousands of existing PFAS chemicals. It is fair to say that the presence of carcinogenic, non-degradable forever chemicals makes our water far from wholesome, and instead akin to a chemical cocktail that desperately needs regulation,” the MP warned.

Drawing attention to the River Thames in Teddington in her own constituency, she pointed out that it had the sixth greatest concentration of PFAS in the UK between 2019 and 2022 - 11 times above the safe level set out by the EU.

She told the MPs present:

“Concerns about our local water quality increased following proposals by Thames Water to construct the Teddington direct river abstraction scheme, which would pump treated effluent into our precious waterway. It has been promised that the treated effluent would be the same quality as the river itself, yet there has been no assurance that compounds and chemicals such as PFAS would be filtered out.”

Other concerns the MP highlighted included:

• Raw sewage spills - the Marine Conservation Society notes that there is no legal requirement for water companies to monitor for PFAS in sewer overflows.
• A study conducted by the University of Portsmouth found that following sewage discharges in Langstone harbour, the amount of one particular PFAS— perfluorobutanoic acid, or PFBA—in seaweed was more than 6,000 times higher than in the surrounding water.
• Analysis by the Royal Society of Chemistry has revealed that more than a third of watercourses in England and Wales contain medium or high-risk levels of PFAS, and just more than a third also contain two highly toxic PFAS that have been banned internationally.
• Official monitoring data covers only a handful of PFAS chemicals and not all rivers are tested - so actual pollution levels could be even worse.
• In 2023, the Health and Safety Executive identified PFAS chemicals as a risk for consumer exposure and recommended legislation to limit the presence of the chemicals in drinking water.
• In October 2024, 59 of the world’s leading scientists wrote to the Government urging them to adopt a more ambitious approach to the regulation of PFAS by regulating it as a group.

Saying that the previous Government “sat on their hands and ignored this emerging health threat” she went on to warn that as more and more health risks from PFAS chemicals are discovered every day, it is clear that they must be regulated more tightly as a chemical group, “not as and when the threat is slowly identified.”

“It is my belief that water companies will only take steps if we make them do so, with binding limits set in law,” the MP added.

Commenting on the regulation of PFAs in other countries, Munira Wilson said that both the EU and US have taken significant strides to tackle PFAS pollution in recognition of the multitude of health concerns linked to the chemicals. The US has introduced a limit of 4 nanograms per litre for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, or PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, while from January 2026, EU member states will have to ensure that the sum of all PFAS in drinking water does not go above a limit of 0.5 micrograms per litre.

She went on to draw attention to the impact of Brexit, saying:

“Sadly, Brexit has meant that in the three and a half years since the UK left the EU Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) regulation - the EU system of regulating chemicals—our response to the growing threat of PFAS has moved at a snail’s pace and we have fallen behind.

“Other than one internationally banned substance, not a single restriction on a harmful substance has been adopted since the UK left EU REACH in 2021. That is in part due to the UK no longer having access to the world’s most comprehensive chemical registration database held by the European Chemicals Agency; we must now go through duplicate processes for regulatory decision making.

“There is a clear need for European alignment… if we do not regulate PFAS as a chemical group, we risk equally toxic new pollutants replacing the ones we regulate. We risk becoming a dumping ground for products with banned PFAS. We risk becoming the dirty man of Europe.”

The Bill is due to have its Second Reading on Friday 24 January 2025.