Chemicals continue to pollute Peel’s waterways; Region awaits guidelines from Health Canada to keep drinking water safe  

Synthetic chemicals, widely found in everyday consumer products such as food packaging, carpets and textiles, are leaching into Peel’s waterways—and pouring out of residents’ taps. 

The Region is trying to determine the full impact of these “forever chemicals”, but there is no mechanism in place to fully remove them from the municipal water supply, raising questions about the long-term health implications of these ubiquitous compounds.  

A June 27 report to the Region of Peel revealed that “forever chemicals” — per-and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — along with other contaminants of emerging concern (CECs) are being found in Peel’s drinking water and wastewater systems, but the Region is limited in what it can do to remove them. 

“Peel doesn't have enough evidence at this time to know how effective our current drinking water treatment processes are at removing PFAS,” Elvis Oliveira, director of Infrastructure Planning Partnerships and Compliance with Peel Region’s Water Wastewater Division, said in a statement to The Pointer.  

Peel has 1.5 million residents in Mississauga, Brampton, and some parts of Caledon (Bolton and Mayfield West) whose homes rely on water from the Region’s Arthur P. Kennedy Treatment Plant and the Lorne Park Water Treatment Plant, which process over 1.6 billion litres each day. While the contaminant levels found in test samples are below Health Canada guidelines, their lingering presence is a red flag as these synthetic substances are linked to increased risk of cancer and other maladies. 

In 2010 the United Nations General Assembly passed a declaration to ensure that every person has the right to safe drinking water, and for several decades the existence of PFAS has led to a series of recommendations from governments and agencies to limit their spread in the environment. Currently, PFAS are not regulated under existing drinking water legislation in Ontario. 

Agencies affiliated with the UN have recommended that regional and local governments adapt water treatment systems to mitigate the increasing amount of “forever” compounds that are becoming more and more common in everything from clothes and food packaging to textiles and a range of single-use items, many of which are now being banned in jurisdictions around the world. But these chemicals remain popular among industrial producers in various forms due to their heat resistance and ability to repel water. 

PFAS testing in Ontario is voluntary—there are currently no federal or provincial requirements, and testing is expensive, Oliveira explained. Without provincial regulatory limits or legislation on PFAS in drinking water, water treatment facilities across Ontario have not been intentionally designed to remove them from the water supply. Adding to the challenge, available data for municipal drinking water systems to determine the full scale of the PFAS problem with their jurisdiction remains scarce. 

PFAS encompass thousands of synthetic chemicals known for their stability, heat resistance and water-repellant characteristics, commonly found in cosmetics, food packaging materials, electronics, adhesives, lubricants and other widely used consumer products. Coined “forever chemicals” for their strength and resistance to breaking down in the environment and the human body, they have been associated with potential negative health effects.  

Human exposure to PFAS has essentially become inevitable as they are found in air, water and food. The Region’s June 27 report noted these chemicals have been linked to increased risk of cancer and other illnesses, “but the evidence is limited.” 

The report revealed that “Certain PFAS have been found in the blood of the general population in Canada and internationally.” It added that while PFAS exposure in Canada has been declining, “it is unclear what the exposure trends are for the vast majority of PFAS.” According to the report, some well-studied PFAS “are known to be readily absorbed into the body and are eliminated very slowly, meaning that they can accumulate and persist in the body for years.”

“Forever chemicals” contained in many consumer products continue to be identified in Peel’s water supply.

(John Cameron/Unsplash) 

Although these kinds of chemicals have been used since the 1940s, their dangers have not been fully understood and the Region’s report underscores that “testing methods are only now becoming sensitive enough to understand the extent of their presence, potential exposure routes and impact.”

“The health implications of widespread exposure to the multitude of PFAS is not currently known and evidence remains limited,” it warned. “PFAS may have adverse effects on the liver, kidney, thyroid, immune system, nervous system, metabolism, reproduction, and development. Studies have suggested an association between some PFAS and various cancers.”

Cassie Barker with Environmental Defence testified before a Parliamentary committee in March urging the federal government to take action on mitigating the use of these threatening chemicals. She called on the government to advance PFAS regulations and set more stringent rules to drive the reformulation of products away from dangerous chemicals by switching to safer alternatives.

“This class of chemicals poses a significant danger to freshwater ecosystems, source waters and human and environmental health,” she said in her remarks. 

“Urgent action is needed to address this growing PFAS threat in Canada. The Canadian government must support municipalities that need federal leadership to prohibit the sources of PFAS. The federal government recently proposed a municipal drinking water objective, but until it prohibits PFAS contamination of our waters from products and industrial releases, this objective will do little to reduce PFAS contamination in our drinking water.”

One of the major challenges with these types of chemicals is that each time a specific PFAS compound is regulated by the government, chemical manufacturers then replace it with a related PFAS that carries similar properties, making it harder to identify as the replacement compound is often not well studied. This creates more uncertainty around the impacts on the environment and to human health, and makes it increasingly difficult to establish limits for new PFAS. 

There is also limited understanding of the health implications of exposure to multiple PFAS simultaneously, what the Region’s report dubs a “chemical cocktail”. It's the main reason Canada has worked to regulate PFAS as a whole, as opposed to the individual compounds. 

In Canada, the responsibility lies with the federal government to establish drinking water guidelines, but putting in place and enforcing these regulations is overseen by the provinces. Under the 2002 Safe Drinking Water Act, PFAS are currently not listed in the Ontario Drinking Water Standards and in 2017 the province developed interim advice for PFAS. The interim measures recommended that water not exceed 70 nanograms per litre (ng/L) for 11 different PFAS. The Region equates the concentration of one nanogram per litre to one teaspoon of sugar in 5 billion litres of water.

The Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks (MECP) is also working with Health Canada and other provinces to develop Canadian Drinking Water Guidelines for these chemicals. Once the revised guidelines are released, regional staff will bring an updated report to council in 2025 detailing if Peel’s monitoring program will need to be updated to meet standards under the new regime.

Although limiting the source of PFAS is beyond Peel's authority, in an effort to combat these chemicals, the federal government has been prohibiting and restricting the manufacture, use, sale, and import of certain PFAS deemed toxic to the environment and the majority of the products they are found in, as well as developing guidelines to ensure the well being of ecosystems and human health by protecting drinking water, soil and groundwater. 

PFAS often enter the environment through industrial release into the air, soil and water systems. 

(CORE.AC.UK)

In 2022, Health Canada proposed a drinking water standard with a total PFAS limit of 30 ng/L, which is expected to be finalized later this year. For reference, from 2016 to 2019, the Region of Peel participated in PFAS studies led by the MECP, during which 14 PFAS compounds were tested in 25 drinking water systems in Ontario. The highest average compound detected in the water systems was 2.4 ng/L. Further testing by MECP on 635 drinking water samples collected from 13 drinking water systems in Ontario did not detect concentrations above 10 ng/L. 

Health Canada’s proposed standard, which would establish PFAS as an entire class of chemicals, will not create mandatory testing for drinking water systems, but would provide a baseline to compare Peel’s results in the future should it be adopted into Ontario drinking water legislation.

Regular annual testing for PFAS in Peel’s source water (Lake Ontario and municipal groundwater wells) began in 2020 and staff have been studying both source water and treated drinking water semi-annually since November 2022. According to staff, the PFAS levels detected to date sit below Health Canada’s proposed total PFAS limit. Staff say more monitoring is required to “confidently understand PFAS levels in Peel.”

Some of the treatment processes at both of the Region’s plants employ what is known as granular activated carbon (GAC), which is specifically tailored to remove organic compounds responsible for altering the taste and odour of water— but not remove PFAS, according to the Region’s report. If reducing PFAS becomes mandatory to adhere to future regulations, staff said the current GAC processes may be deemed inadequate, potentially requiring “significant” capital investment. 

Research conducted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) recommends several water treatment options as the most effective in removing PFAS, including nanofiltration, reverse osmosis, and anion exchange. Upgrading Peel’s water treatment facilities to nanofiltration filters or reverse osmosis would also require “large capital investment”. The anion exchange would not be practical for the scale of the region’s facilities, the report states. 

Despite the absence of regulatory standards for PFAS for drinking water in Ontario, the Region of Peel has been taking steps to mitigate the risks from these chemicals and other CECs, including participating in provincial studies, implementing a surveillance program to assess PFAS levels, and initiating studies to understand the harms. In 2023, the Region established a Contaminants of Emerging Concern Committee that implemented a surveillance program to test Peel’s water and wastewater for several CECs. The Committee monitors the local water supply for contaminants that are currently unregulated but are emerging as risks to human health and/or the environment.

The Region of Peel began regular annual testing for PFAS in source water, including Lake Ontario, in 2020. Semi-annual testing of both source water and treated drinking water began in November 2022.

(Alexis Wright/The Pointer Files) 

Extremely low concentrations make it increasingly challenging to remove PFAS, Oliveira explained, and laboratory testing can be very costly, limiting the frequency of monitoring. With thousands of different PFAS already in existence and new ones being created, it adds to the challenges of trying to find them and determine the risks—something that can take years. Details about the composition of drinking water sources are also unknown. Removal technology is very limited, especially at Peel's scale, Oliveira added, and with PFAS being synthetic chemicals, they are specifically designed to be resilient, making them even more difficult to fully remove. 

The Region will continue to monitor PFAS and other CECs to establish a baseline of data to inform future decisions, the report notes. This will include monitoring contaminant levels in Peel waterways and using local data to determine when changes to Peel’s response or additional treatment intervention is needed, according to the report. 

“Once the Canadian drinking water guidelines for PFAS and other CECs become clear, Peel staff will complete a detailed study of the feasible treatment technology options for Peel’s drinking water facilities, including any potential capital expenditures needed and associated operations and maintenance costs.”  

Capital and operating costs for “treatment and monitoring…cannot be determined at this time and will be subject to assessing regulatory limits and available technologies,” the report explained. 

Peel will not know what the costs will be until the provincial government determines safe limits for PFAS.

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Twitter: @mcpaigepeacock

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