A report published on 15 October 2026 has warned that India's drinking-water and sewage infrastructure is not built to deal with PFAS, the per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances often called "forever chemicals", even as studies in multiple states continue to detect them in groundwater, sewage and treated water Indiatimes. The report says the country still has no PFAS-specific drinking-water limits, no standardised national monitoring framework, and no commercially available treatment systems proven to remove these compounds reliably Indiatimes.
Key takeaways
- On 15 October 2026, an Indiatimes report said India's water systems are not designed for PFAS and lack national limits and standardised monitoring Indiatimes.
- A 2024 IIT-Madras study in Environmental Sciences Europe found concentrations of all eight target PFAS in treated water at a Chennai plant were 5 per cent to 103 per cent higher than in the raw water Indiatimes.
- A separate study by GITAM (Deemed to be) University, Hyderabad, with collaborators from Canada and the United States, detected 38 of 77 PFAS compounds tested in seawater and sewage around Visakhapatnam and estimated sewage accounted for about 41 per cent of median coastal PFAS concentrations Indiatimes.
- A 2025 review in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances, covering Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal, concluded that PFAS contamination in India is not hypothetical but its national extent is poorly mapped Indiatimes.
- Indumathi M. Nambi, a professor of environmental engineering and coauthor of the Chennai study, said testing only a fixed list of eight compounds captures only a small slice of the fluorinated chemicals in circulation Indiatimes.
What happened
The 15 October 2026 Indiatimes report draws on The Hindu and a series of peer-reviewed papers to argue that India now has enough evidence to treat PFAS as a real environmental and public-health issue, even though the full scale of contamination is unclear Indiatimes. The report says the problem is not a lack of warning signs but the absence of a national monitoring framework, a limited set of laboratory methods, and treatment technologies that are not yet widely available at commercial scale Indiatimes.
The most operationally significant finding comes from Chennai. IIT-Madras researchers analysed 14 water samples collected between 2022 and 2023 from groundwater, surface water and the four stages of a water treatment plant; the highest PFAS concentrations were found in groundwater from residential wells near garbage dumps, and concentrations of all eight target PFAS in treated water were reported to be 5 per cent to 103 per cent higher than in raw water Indiatimes. Coauthor Indumathi M. Nambi said this could indicate that unidentified precursor chemicals were being transformed into more stable PFAS during treatment, and the study did not measure those precursors directly Indiatimes.
Along the coast, a study published in npj Emerging Contaminants and led by GITAM (Deemed to be) University, Hyderabad, with collaborators from Canada and the United States, tested 77 PFAS compounds in seawater and sewage around Visakhapatnam, detected 38 of them, and used modelling to estimate that sewage accounted for about 41 per cent of median PFAS concentrations along the coast Indiatimes. Manoj Rayaroth, an assistant professor at GITAM and a coauthor, said separating municipal sewage from industrial inputs would require systematic sampling near mixing points rather than broad coastal snapshots, while Nejumal Kannankeril Khalid of the University of Montreal said source discrimination would improve if researchers combined targeted and non-target screening with chemical fingerprints and machine-learning tools Indiatimes.
The 15 October report also cites a 2025 review in the Journal of Hazardous Materials Advances covering monitoring and regulation in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Rajneesh Kumar Gautam of the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, the review's first author, said the available evidence shows PFAS contamination is not hypothetical in India, but the national extent is still poorly mapped because research groups use different testing and analytical approaches Indiatimes. The report further notes that the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in its 2025 monograph, classified perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, as carcinogenic to humans Indiatimes.
Specification read
The Indiatimes report does not state a flow rate in m³/day or a population equivalent for the Chennai water treatment plant, the Visakhapatnam coastal outfalls, or the Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal catchments covered by the 2025 review, so a buyer-scale figure cannot be derived from the supplied sources Indiatimes. What the report does specify is the treatment-train gap: conventional trains of screening, primary clarification, biological treatment such as activated sludge, MBBR, SBR, MBR or UASB, and tertiary disinfection were not designed to remove the strong carbon-fluorine bonds that make PFAS persistent Indiatimes. The reported 5 per cent to 103 per cent rise in PFAS across the four stages of the Chennai plant indicates that transformation of precursor chemicals can take place inside the existing biological and disinfection stages, meaning any retrofit to meet future PFAS limits is likely to sit at the polishing or destruction end of the train rather than upstream Indiatimes. If your plant is an Indian Municipal water or wastewater facility drawing on groundwater or sewage near industrial corridors and is already under pressure to add non-target PFAS monitoring, the Chennai and Visakhapatnam findings point to the need for a high-resolution mass spectrometry programme and a dedicated polishing or destruction stage downstream of the existing Integrated Sewage Treatment line.
FAQ
What PFAS-specific limits does India currently apply to drinking water or sewage discharge?
As of the 15 October 2026 Indiatimes report, India still has no PFAS-specific drinking-water limits and no standardised national monitoring framework, so a buyer cannot design to a fixed effluent PFAS number and must instead plan for precautionary limits that may be introduced Indiatimes.
Which stage of a conventional treatment train is most likely to be blamed for PFAS passing through?
The Chennai study found PFAS concentrations 5 per cent to 103 per cent higher in treated water than in raw water across the four stages sampled, with coauthor Indumathi M. Nambi suggesting precursor transformation inside the existing train, which puts the responsibility on the polishing and destruction stages rather than on biological or primary units Indiatimes.
How should a coastal or port-area utility design its PFAS source-tracing work?
The GITAM-led Visakhapatnam study estimated sewage at about 41 per cent of median coastal PFAS and recommended systematic sampling near mixing points of municipal and industrial outfalls rather than broad coastal snapshots, using targeted plus non-target screening and chemical fingerprints Indiatimes.
Are there commercially available treatment systems in India that can reliably remove PFAS?
The 15 October 2026 report says treatment technologies capable of reliably removing PFAS are not yet widely available at commercial scale in India, so lead times and supplier selection for a PFAS polishing step remain open questions for procurement teams Indiatimes.
