"Worrying stories" about the risks of exposure to "forever" chemicals are being shared on social media by those with no scientific experience.
Experts at an inquiry into the regulation and management of PFAS have called on government and regulatory sources to tackle the misinformation by better communicating facts that the public can understand and trust.
RMIT University's Oliver Jones told the inquiry that a lot of information was being shared by people who "have no experience in toxicology, no experience in chemistry, and in many cases, no real experience of PFAS".
PFAS (per and polyfluoroalkyl substances) have been widely used in products including cookware and firefighting foams due to their oil and water repellence and temperature resistance.
Professor Jones, who is an expert in tracking pollutants and their possible effects on biological systems, told the inquiry in Canberra on Tuesday that it was important to understand the extent of a dose, the duration of a dose, and the route of exposure.
"You don't have to go very far online to find a lot of worrying stories about PFAS … but we don't hear an awful lot from government sources and regulatory sources," he said.
There was a need to communicate science in a way the public could understand and trust, "so that we have social licence to explain the risks and people understand those risks and accept them, rather than in some cases, people believe that whatever the government said must be wrong by default".
The Australian Academy of Science's Hayley Teasdale said PFAS monitoring, impact assessment and remediation were at a transitional point between academic research and regulatory science, "and that may or may not lead to some unsatisfactory answers along the lines of, 'well, we're not sure yet, and that hasn't yet been determined'".
This transition was marked by a deliberate shift from inquiry-based research to a more comprehensive, co-ordinated approach to building the evidence base.
"This is why our submission called for a strategic national monitoring program," Dr Teasdale said.
"It's not intended as a generic call for more funding for research. Rather, it is an investment in government scientific infrastructure to fulfil government responsibilities towards its citizens."
The University of Tasmania's Nathan Kilah told the inquiry one of the reasons why research was so difficult was that "every person in Australia has PFAS in their bodies".
Prof Jones noted that PFAS was "an extremely difficult thing to test for".
"We're looking at things in the part per trillion range in some cases … so it's very easy to accidentally say, double your value that you're measuring because of a very small amount of contamination."
For health testing, "you'd want a method that had been validated, proven and was trusted by a wide variety of groups", he said.
American expert Jamie DeWitt told the inquiry there had been many studies showing that exposure to PFAS could suppress vaccine antibody response, which could have "profound effects" on human health.
"I wish I could say that the only health effects of PFAS are limited to the immune system, but we call PFAS multi-system toxicants, because these agents can impact many different parts of the body," she said
The University of Newcastle's Ravi Naidu said PFAS research was "underfunded and fragmented" with "different groups working on different things" and there was no co-ordinating body to ensure a focus on the most important issues.
The inquiry, chaired by Senator Lidia Thorpe, will report in early August.
