Support for developing and drafting technical guidelines on PFAS substances under the recast Drinking Water Directive : final report

IWW, TZW, University of Copenhagen, and Örebro University have been selected by the European Commission (EC or Commission) to perform services to develop and draft technical guidelines on PFAS under the recast Drinking Water Directive (DWD). This final report covers a short summary of the deliverables on Tasks 1 and 2 (work described in the Interim Report) and summary of deliverables and final reporting on Task 3, 4 and 5 covering work conducted from the interim report delivered in September 2023 until May 2024. The objectives of the project are to create an overview of existing targeted, non-targeted, and non-specific analytical approaches for the analysis of PFAS developed through literature reviews and expert knowledge to propose a selection of best-suitable methods for the determination of Sum of PFAS (PFAS-20) and PFAS Total that should be described in a technical guideline in accordance with Article 13 (7) in the DWD. Member State engagement has been a key to this project and next to two planned online Meetings, two EU survey questionnaires and an additional expert meeting has provided valuable insights about the Member States´ expectations to analytical methods for PFAS and comments to the proposed ones. The project findings have been reported in this final report, an interim report, and minutes from the two online Meetings and progress meetings throughout the project. The draft technical guideline has been commented and updated based on the comments by Member States. Since the problem of taking TFA into account in PFAS analysis was a central point of discussion during the course of the project, the project team was asked by DG ENV to propose an approach to address this problem. The results of this analysis are presented in chapter 7 of this report.