To ask the Minister for Infrastructure to detail any assessment her Department, in conjunction with NI Water, has made of the risk of per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances contamination in public drinking water supplies serving coastal communities and inhabited islands in Northern Ireland.

NI Water’s underpinning approach to the protection of public health through clean safe drinking water is the World Health Organisation’s Drinking Water Safety Plan (DWSP) approach, which seeks to understand existing and emerging risks to drinking water supplies, from raw water in the environment, through drinking water treatment systems, the drinking water network and right through to the risks posed by customer taps, and ensuring that appropriate and effective control measures are in place.

The risk for PFAS is included as a risk within NI Water’s DWSPs across all water supplies. The potential for atmospheric PFAS contamination deposition from sea spray and or sea foam aerosols, in coastal influenced drinking water catchment areas, is considered as a source risk in the overall risk assessment for PFAS contamination in public drinking water supplies in the north.

PFAS sample results for both the raw water and the final treated public drinking water supply across the whole of the north,including coastal communities and inhabited islands, show that all the results are in line with the regulatory standards i.e. are within the recommended tolerances, with the majority of results reported at less than the level of quantification (LOQ) for the PFAS substances tested.