10 Thoughts on the UK Government PFAS Plan

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Dan Maher

1. Data, data everywhere...

The PFAS Plan will require a lot of data to be acquired (Section 1) – particularly around prevalence, source location, and toxicology. Without this data, much of the plan cannot be actioned. However, ambitions to generate a wide-ranging set of soil, water and air quality data requires a detailed and actionable scope of work, which is yet to be developed. There is apparent desire for organisations to create the dataset collaboratively (British Geological Survey are mentioned directly), which creates a few questions:

Will this outsourcing of data collection lead to an uncoordinated approach?
Once the government have the data, what are they going to do with it?
How will historical datasets with varying numbers of PFAS reported and higher reporting limits be integrated into the ‘national database’?
What will be published, and who will be able to use it?
Will industry have full access (see for example the Flemish DOV explorer), to help regulators develop a pragmatic, risk-based approach to dealing with PFAS?
Will publishing of data be coordinated with the release of generic acceptance criteria or similar threshold values?

A delicate balance will need to be struck to ensure the data is accessible and usable, and can support a pragmatic, risk-based approach to PFAS management.

2. Improved understanding of PFAS in UK soils

As with many evolving challenges, there are “known knowns” and “known unknowns”. Ambient (not background; PFAS only exists because humanity created it) concentrations in soil and water are very much a “known unknown”. We just don’t have an accessible data set that allows us to understand what the starting point should be when we consider remediation of PFAS in soils and groundwater, so a plan to develop such an understanding should be commended (Action 1.3). However, what’s missing is a timeline, and without that, uncertainty remains. Presumably the government are working with partners to establish that timeline, so we eagerly await further detail.

3. Easy wins missed?

The fundamental question of “what are we going to do about PFAS” seems to be the objective of the plan rather than part of it; there could be more regulatory certainty. For example, there is only a commitment to consult on whether to add statutory weight to Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) limits (Action 3.6) rather than giving them immediate regulatory value. It is good that the government want to weigh up options and ensure that restrictions are not overly harsh, but the reality is that this means more and more PFAS will enter the environment while the consultation happens. The value of this part of the plan will only really be apparent once we know how far limits go and how long it will take to get them in place.

4. European – or even global – alignment?

To paraphrase an American colleague of mine, when discussing good practice for PFAS management, “The US, Europe and Australia walked so the UK can run”. This is a sentiment echoing in the PFAS Plan. For example, the plan implies that there is a general desire to align with the EU on some restriction on PFAS. There is also some alignment with the UN Global Framework on Chemicals (GFC) and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) work on PFAS (Action 2.8). “Some” is the operative word here, as there are exceptions; notably, a commitment only to “consider” further alignment with EU REACH, which governs chemical safety and trade within the EU (Action 2.2). It’s entirely acceptable for the UK government to want to chart their own path, but it will be interesting to see how much they will follow where the EU and others have led.

5. Waste to land...

Domestic wastewater has long been understood to be a source of PFAS; everything from washing your hair to putting your waterproof jacket in the washing machine could contribute small amounts of PFAS to municipal wastewater treatment systems, which are not designed to deal with such contaminants. PFAS is also present in the biosolids created from the wastewater treatment process (Actions 3.10 to 3.12) and for years those biosolids have been spread on agricultural land as fertilizer. The PFAS Plan recognises this pathway and resolves to do something about it. But this creates a broader societal issue; what are we going to do with our sewage? This question isn’t answered in the PFAS Plan (and we would not expect it to be), but it is something that society will have to grapple with. Incineration of PFAS can be problematic and landfill capacity is severely limited. In solving one problem we need to be careful not to create another.

6. ...and waste in the land

Historic landfills are known to be a source of PFAS. Older landfills have unsorted and poorly documented waste, and are deposited into unlined pits that often sit below the water table. This is recognised in the PFAS Plan and highlighted as an issue that the government would like to address, but with details still lacking. In addition to landfills that have featured some level of regulatory oversight, there are estimated to be in excess of 20,000 “legacy” landfills and as many as 8,000 illegal waste sites, many of which likely contain PFAS. Do we yet have sufficient understanding for the significance of each of the potential sources of PFAS emissions based on recent US research into PFAS in landfill gas? The PFAS Plan recognises this issue (Action 2.14) but doesn’t secure the means to address it or offer a timeline for the assessment. Is the government significantly underestimating the scale of the issue?

7. When is enough enough?

There is a clear desire in the PFAS Plan to reduce the use of PFAS in products and restrict it in industrial discharge (Action 2.10 to 2.13). But there is no driver for a more wide-ranging ban, such as the one currently being discussed in the EU. So, how much is enough when reducing the amount of PFAS entering our environment? Being too permissive or not acting quickly enough could result in a significant mass of PFAS being released. Is this merely creating a problem for future generations that could be solved by this one? Obviously there are costs to both the public and private purse associated with a blanket ban but the costs associated with not going far enough will likely be even greater.

8. Are target values on the way?

The PFAS Plan sets a clear intention to introduce (‘non-interim’) target values for PFAS in water, soil, ecosystems, and consumer products (Actions 2.12, 3.1, 3.7 among others). This is an important step for land condition professionals and something many have been calling for. But the devil is in the detail – of which there is very little. No timeline is ascribed to the development of the targets and the methodology for setting them is incomplete, while more consideration is needed of the underlying toxicology (COT PFAS Working Group) to support a future methodology. This potentially leaves liability holders, regulators, the government and the whole environmental sector in a state of PFAS purgatory. Landowners might be reticent to voluntarily remediate in case the goalposts are shifted part way through. Regulators may be minded to be less pragmatic in fear of setting targets above those eventually endorsed by central government, and consultants are limited in the advice they can provide. It’s imperative that a credible timeline is now set for deriving these values so we can move forward.

9. Public pressure vs political reality

It’s important to draw a distinction here between what the PFAS Plan is and is not. It is an aspirational plan from a government wanting to set out a path to dealing with an increasingly high-profile problem. But it is not a binding document, nor does it have any legal weight or a timeline to which it can be held. Without a firm mechanism to turn this from a plan into a legal framework, there is significant chance that a future government will change priorities after 2029 – as we have seen in the US with the USEPA’s recent proposed rule changes to extend PFAS compliance deadlines and reduce PFAS in scope. And if some aspects of the plan are achieved and others quietly ditched, this (or future) government could be open to public activism or even litigation. Imagine a scenario where a government-funded project declares a particular concentration of PFAS to pose an unacceptable risk, but mechanisms to address such concentrations in the environment are not introduced.

10. Above everything, it's progress

At the very least, the plan represents a credible path forward with one of the biggest environmental and public health issues of our age. This is the first step on what is likely to be a long road – one that will no doubt change direction regularly as our understanding of PFAS develops. A giant leap is still needed to fulfil the objectives set out. The PFAS Plan has given us much more clarity on the Governments expected direction of travel. As land condition professionals, we now need to support effective action that delivers a pragmatic, risk-based approach to PFAS management for the benefit of people and our environment.

Dan is a Senior Scientist at Geosyntec Consultants Ltd with nearly a decade of experience in environmental consultancy and prior to that, he spent over a decade working as a Local Authority regulator. Dan currently sits on the Steering Group for the IES Land Condition Community. Over the last couple of years, Dan has worked on a variety of high-profile PFAS-driven projects, with an increasing focus on managing PFAS liability on permitted sites across the UK.