The review is being conducted consistent with NHMRC’s guideline development process which has a number of stages that are informed by best practice approaches and are part of the NHMRC Standards for Guidelines for ensuring high quality, trusted guidelines. There are multiple checks including drafting by an expert advisory committee, consultation with jurisdictional water experts, public consultation and expert review.
Public consultation on draft guidance on PFAS for the Australian Drinking Water Guidelines is now closed. All submissions will be considered by the Water Quality Advisory Committee in consultation with NHMRC.
The updated advice is expected to be finalised and published in April 2025. The timeline chart outlines the expected timeline for key milestones.
| Key Milestones | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scope of project established in response to new advisories overseas | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||||||
| Independent contractor undertakes evidence review | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||||||||
| Draft guidance is prepared and reviewed by targeted consultation | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||||||||||||
| Draft guidance is reviewed by public consultation | ✔ | |||||||||||||||
| Consultation comments are addressed, and final guidance is released in April 2025* | ● | ● | ||||||||||||||
* Please note that this is an approximate date and can be subject to change.
Evidence Review
An independent contractor has reviewed recent PFAS guidance and reviews for 5 PFAS chemicals, based on the June 2022 United States Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) health advisories that prompted the NHMRC review. These include:
- perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS), perfluorohexane sulfonate (PFHxS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) to assess whether current advice in the Guidelines is still appropriate.
- perfluorobutanate sulfonic acid and its potassium salt (PFBS) and hexafluoropropylene oxide (HFPO) dimer acid and its ammonium salt ('GenX chemicals') to assess whether guideline values for drinking water are required.
The evidence review includes the PFAS National Drinking Water Standard published by the US EPA in April 2024, which superseded its previous interim drinking water health advisories for PFAS.
The research protocol and evidence review reports completed by the independent contractor are available to download below.
The Water Quality Advisory Committee considered the findings of the evidence review through an evidence-to-decision process and updated the PFAS fact sheet for public consultation. An overview of the guideline development process is provided in the draft Administrative Report.
Draft Guidance
The updated PFAS fact sheet is available to view and download. An NHMRC statement with a summary of findings that informed the update to the PFAS fact sheet is also available to view.
Disclaimer: NHMRC aims to follow and meet the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.2 AA). Despite our best efforts to ensure accessibility of NHMRC's website, we publish documents and publications received from third parties, and these may not meet the WCAG 2.2 AA and there may be some limitations.
If you have difficulty accessing our content, contact us by emailing webrequest@nhmrc.gov.au. Please provide a summary and description of the location of the web page or content in question so we can send an alternate format of the content where possible.
