Risico's van PFAS voor drinkwaterbedrijven (Memo)

Per- and polyfluorinated compounds (PFAS) are a broad group of anthropogenic organic substances that have been widely used in numerous industrial processes since the 1940s. Due to their persistence, bioaccumulation and toxicity, PFAS have been increasingly studied worldwide. Current monitoring programs include the analysis of PFAS, but only a limited number of compounds are investigated. Increasing research and regulatory attention is now focused on the assessment of a larger and more comprehensive group of PFAS.
In the recent project (Amato et al., 2023b), KWR developed advanced analytical techniques to identify a wide range of PFAS in surface, ground and drinking water using high-resolution mass spectrometry (HRMS), and suspect and non-target screening methods (NTS). In addition, a procedure to estimate total oxidizable precursors (TOP) has been validated at KWR. However, more approaches exist that measure the total amount of organically bound fluorine as a proxy of total PFAS concentrations, including adsorbable organic fluorine (AOF) methods. Although non-specific (i.e., it can only measure total fluorine content, but not specific compounds), this method can be useful for rapid preliminary screening, and is currently considered by the European Commission for implementation in the Drinking Water Directive as a method to determine total fluorine in water (Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Quality of Water Intended for Human Consumption, 2020). Thus, the application and integration of these methods with the existing ones is also particularly relevant from a legislative point of view