PFAS – a system-wide challenge requiring a system-wide solution

26 May 2026

As ‘forever chemicals’ rise up the policy agenda, CIWEM policy officer Isabel Thompson considers how we should respond to what could become a defining issue for the water sector

“They are building up in our bodies and in the environment, and we know that they are harmful.” This is how Toby Perkins, the MP for Chesterfield, described per and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) as he announced the launch of a report on the chemicals by the cross parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee. It is a stark summary of a group of substances that has moved quickly from a specialist regulatory concern to a broader environmental and public health issue.

Perkins isn’t the only one who’s worried. In her foreword to the government’s recently published PFAS plan, Emma Hardy, the minister for water, writes that, “Forever chemicals represent one of the most pressing chemical challenges of our time”.

This family of more than 10,000 chemicals, first developed in the 1930s and widely used from the 1950s onwards, are today found in products ranging from carpets and clothing to cookware and packaging. Their resistance to heat, water and oil has made them useful across sectors including healthcare, transport, cosmetics and household goods. Highly resistant to breakdown as a result of their strong carbon-fluorine bonds, they have become known as ‘forever chemicals’.

Parliamentarians only began discussing PFAS in 2020, as part of the conversation around changes to regulations required by the UK’s exit from the European Union. Since then, attention has grown steadily, with PFAS now raised in parliamentary debates, select committee inquiries and legislative proposals. A report commissioned by the Environment Agency (EA), published in 2023, for example, estimated that remediating between 2,900 and 10,200 high-risk sites affected by PFAS contamination in England could cost between £31 billion and £121 billion. Costs vary significantly depending on contamination levels, site size and treatment complexity, with landfills, wastewater treatment works and major chemical or refinery sites among the most expensive to address.

Why this matters now

As political scrutiny and public awareness increase, PFAS may become a defining environmental issue for the water sector, as has happened in recent years with sewage pollution.

PFAS reaches water systems through multiple pathways, including industrial processes, the liquid that leaches from landfill sites, firefighting foams, wastewater discharges and the everyday use of consumer products. Contamination is not confined to a single source or sector: it moves through homes, businesses, drainage networks, treatment works, rivers, soils and waste streams, making it difficult to isolate and manage.

PFAS also raises an important question of environmental inequity. While these chemicals are now so widespread that exposure is not limited to any one group, poorer communities may face greater risks. This is because they are more likely to live near potential sources of contamination and because they have fewer resources to try to reduce their exposure.

Households on lower incomes are less able to pay for filtration, move away from affected areas or absorb higher water bills if the costs of treatment and remediation are passed on to consumers. In that sense, PFAS is not only a pollution issue but also a question of who bears the greatest burden of living with and paying for persistent contamination.

Yet even though PFAS contamination already affects water, land and food systems, for many people the term still feels abstract: another technical acronym for a complex man-made pollutant. This is problematic because if the public do not understand the dangers of these chemicals and how pervasive they are, they will be less able to make choices that reduce their exposure to them. Into this knowledge void may stream misunderstanding about the most effective way to tackle this challenge, with blame potentially laid at the door of the water sector and its regulators alone.

A systems issue across the water cycle

CIWEM’s policy team has been exploring PFAS in water systems in greater depth over recent years, first through our 2024 position statement on PFAS and now through discussions with the chairs of our specialist panels and members as we develop a webinar series on the topic. The aim is to explain what PFAS are, where they come from, what we know about their impacts, and why they should be understood as a system-wide challenge rather than the responsibility of any one part of the water and environment sector.

These chemicals create a challenge for wastewater treatment works, most of which were never designed to remove highly persistent fluorinated compounds. Treatment may reduce some concentrations or shift contaminants between water and residual waste streams, but complete removal or destruction remains technically complex and expensive. PFAS cannot be addressed solely at the end of the pipe; they also require stronger control at source.

PFAS is therefore not only a treatment challenge but also a policy question about where and whether these chemicals should be used, what should replace them, and what the economic and social consequences are. Some applications may be difficult to replace quickly, particularly where they are linked to safety, healthcare or specialist industrial performance – in firefighting foams, for example. But without clearer guidance on which uses are justified, how exposure should be reduced, and who should pay for the consequences, the burden is likely to fall further downstream on regulators, water companies and the public.

PFAS have been incorporated into an increasing number of products even though important questions remain about their long-term impacts, disposal and degradation. Limited research, regulatory complexity and the difficulty of approving new treatment technologies are making these chemicals hard to monitor and even harder to remove from water.

Through collaborative understanding, we can create positive change by offering well-informed advice to the government and working together to share valuable information with both the public and the industry. Issues like PFAS can be addressed with proactive and forward-thinking approaches from all sectors, thinking as a collective rather than just about the bottom line.

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Read about policy insights from the CIWEM Policy Team here, or reach out to us at policy@ciwem.org. Keep an eye out on our events page for the upcoming PFAS webinar series.

Isabel Thompson is a policy officer at CIWEM