PFAS and industrial water: practical steps to reduce risk in 2026

PFAS regulations are moving faster than many industrial operators expected. The EU is pushing ahead with restriction proposals under REACH, while over here the UK has opened up a review of drinking water standards and is starting to look harder at industrial discharge limits. Water companies, caught in the middle, are now asking trade effluent customers what is coming down the pipe.

If you are an industrial water user, this affects you. The response does not need to be panic, and it does not need to be an expensive equipment purchase based on incomplete information.

There’s a better order of operations. Screen your water to understand your baseline, then decide what action makes sense for your site and your timeline.

PFAS is a family of thousands of compounds rather than a single chemical. Only some are regulated, and those that are do not all pose the same level of risk or respond to the same treatment. That is worth keeping in mind before anyone starts quoting for kit.

Here is what industrial operators should be doing in 2026.

Start with screening, not specification

The most common mistake we see is sites jumping straight to treatment discussions before they understand what is actually in their water. Vendors arrive with systems to sell, quotes come in for kit that may or may not fit the problem, and money gets spent chasing a risk nobody has measured.

Screening is cheap compared with capital investment. A well-scoped sampling programme across intake water, process water and final discharge will tell you which PFAS compounds are present, at what concentrations, and where in your system they appear.

Most operators should be using a UKAS-accredited lab running a recognised PFAS method. EPA Method 1633 is the widely validated benchmark and covers the compounds most likely to feature in incoming regulation, including PFOA, PFOS, PFHxS, PFBS and the rest of the headline list. ISO 21675 and the emerging European standards cover similar ground. Sample at more than one point, and on more than one day. A single snapshot rarely reflects the true picture, because feedwater quality and process loads both vary.

Understand what the results actually mean

Lab reports are easy to misread. A number above the drinking water guideline does not automatically mean your site has a regulatory problem. Discharge consents work differently, process water targets depend on what you produce, and short-chain PFAS behave differently to long-chain. Some of what shows up in testing will also be precursor compounds that transform over time into the species everyone is actually worried about.

A few questions help you interpret results properly.

Which compounds are driving the total?

If the bulk of your load sits in a handful of regulated species, the treatment choice becomes clearer. If it is spread across many short-chain compounds, the conversation looks quite different.

In practice, the Environment Agency tends to apply a tiered approach to PFAS in industrial discharge. Below 10 ppb, no treatment is typically required. Between 10 and 100 ppb, monitoring is expected. Above 100 ppb, you will likely need to reduce concentrations to below 10 ppb. Knowing where your site sits within that framework changes the urgency and the scale of the response.

And is the source a one-off contamination event, a process input, or something arriving in the incoming mains?

That matters too, because each points to a different response.

Get these answers right and the treatment decision becomes much simpler.

Match treatment to compound and concentration

Treatment technologies have varying levels of effectiveness verses different PFAS molecules, requiring a multi-stage approach. That is why the screen-first approach matters. Once you know what you are dealing with, the route forward usually falls into one of a few familiar options.

Granular activated carbon (GAC) remains a reliable workhorse for long-chain PFAS at moderate concentrations. It is well proven, widely available, and operators understand how to run it. Its weakness is short-chain compounds, which break through earlier and drive up media replacement costs.

Ion exchange resins, particularly the selective resins now on the market, perform well across a broader range of PFAS including shorter-chain species. They can achieve lower effluent concentrations than GAC in many applications, though resin handling and regeneration need to be thought through carefully.

Reverse osmosis and nanofiltration are highly effective at separating PFAS from water. They also produce a concentrated reject stream that still contains the contaminant. That reject then needs to go somewhere, which is where partnership with destruction specialists and emerging on-site technologies becomes part of the conversation.

For most sites, the right answer is a multi-stage train rather than a single technology. Coarse filtration upstream to protect the system, membrane separation to reduce volume, then polishing with GAC or selective ion exchange to hit target concentrations. The exact configuration depends on your water chemistry, flow rate and regulatory position.

Keep the regulatory timeline in view

You do not need to guess at what is coming. The direction of travel is clear enough to plan around.

The EU restriction proposal under REACH is still progressing, with transition periods that will vary by application. The UK is running its own review, with the Drinking Water Inspectorate already tightening expectations and the Environment Agency taking a closer interest in industrial discharges. Water companies are becoming more active in asking trade effluent customers about PFAS, because what you discharge becomes their problem to treat.

Sites that start screening now will have twelve to eighteen months of baseline data by the time firmer rules arrive. That data will be worth a lot when you sit down with the water company or your regulator, and it gives you a head start on any treatment investment that follows.

Work with a partner who can see the whole picture

PFAS rarely sits in isolation. It shows up alongside hardness, organics, suspended solids and the other challenges an industrial water system already manages. The treatment response needs to account for all of it, and for the knock-on effects on the rest of your plant.

At PureTec Separations, we design, build and maintain water treatment systems across the full process. That runs from intake water and coarse filtration through microfiltration, ultrafiltration, nanofiltration and reverse osmosis, and on to ion exchange and activated carbon polishing, with remote monitoring and site performance reviews wrapped around it.

That breadth matters for PFAS, because the answer is almost never a single bolt-on unit. It is a properly sequenced treatment train, matched to the contamination profile and integrated with what you already have.

We also work with destruction specialists where a site needs to go beyond separation to actual breakdown of the captured PFAS. No one company does everything in this space yet, so the strong position is to partner with the right people, openly and early.

What to do this quarter

If PFAS is on your risk register and you have not yet built a baseline, start there. Scope a sampling programme with an accredited lab and build a picture of what is actually in your water before you talk to anyone about equipment.

Once you have that baseline, the conversation about what to do next becomes short and practical. The sites that move first will be the ones with the most options when the rules land.

If you want help shaping a screening plan for your site, or a review of your existing treatment system against the PFAS compounds that matter to you, get in touch with our team and we’ll be happy to help.

Chris Payne is Co-founder and Director of PureTec Separations Ltd, specialists in bespoke water and wastewater treatment. PureTec designs, builds and maintains advanced treatment systems for utilities, food and beverage, pharmaceutical, power, hydrogen, data centre and industrial clients across the UK.