Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs “Protecting public health is absolutely the highest priority for our industry,” Lovell said. “Prevention is always better than the cure.”Lovell said a failure to act risked pushing the massive costs of removing PFAS from drinking water onto consumers.University of Sydney Professor Stuart Khan says consumer goods should be tested for PFAS residues. The call for a far-reaching ban was echoed by Professor Stuart Khan, a water expert and head of the school of civil engineering at the University of Sydney.He also called on the federal government to develop a testing program to detect PFAS residues in a wide range of products, make the polluters shoulder the costs of the clean-up, create an Australia Safe Drinking Water Act and establish an intergovernmental body on hazardous chemicals, so the problems weren’t repeated in the future.“PFAS pollution of environmental water bodies now puts the entire concept of safe, affordable publicly supplied tap water in jeopardy,” he said.Australia’s drinking water guidelines are set to introduce tougher limits on four types of PFAS this year.Sydney Water principal public health adviser Kaye Power said all of Sydney Water’s supplies would meet the incoming guidelines and more stringent US standards.However, she noted not all of Sydney’s drinking water would meet the US EPA’s “aspirational goal” of zero detections in drinking water, based on its conclusion there is no safe level of the probable carcinogens.“If we’re looking at that, we’re looking at putting in treatment at probably 50 per cent of our plants,” Power said.Dr Kristal Jackson, a director at the National Health and Medical Research Council, said Australian authorities were “interested” in the European approach to limit the total amount of PFAS in drinking water instead of targeting individual chemicals.Europe and the US state of Minnesota are also pursuing blanket bans on the chemicals in consumer goods.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
