Osaka Prefecture, Japan, announced the results of an investigation on the 13th, saying that the content of organic fluorine compounds (PFAS) in multiple wells in Kumatori Town, Osaka Prefecture has been detected to be significantly higher than the standard, with the highest being 1,460 times the national standard of Japan.
According to the information released by Osaka Prefecture on the 13th, because a well in Kumatori Town was found to have excessive PFAS content in December 2024, Osaka Prefecture and Kumatori Town cooperated to investigate about 10 wells and rivers near the well. The results showed that the PFAS content in the river did not exceed the standard, while 6 wells exceeded the national standard of Japan, 4 of which exceeded the standard by a large margin, with the highest one containing 73,000 nanograms of perfluorooctane sulfonic acid (PFOS) and perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) per liter of water (1 nanogram equals 0.000001 milligrams), which is 1,460 times the national standard of Japan.
Osaka Prefecture did not announce the specific locations of the wells that exceeded the standard. The Japanese website Mainichi Shimbun reported on the 13th that the well with PFAS content exceeding the standard by 1,460 times is located in the courtyard of a subsidiary of Sumitomo Electric Industries. The cause of the well water pollution is still unclear.
Osaka Prefecture said that the owners of the surrounding wells did not use the well water as drinking water, so there are currently no reports of health damage to residents.
PFAS is a general term for various organic fluorine compounds such as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl compounds, which are widely used in a variety of industrial products. PFAS is not easy to decompose, and some of them have been shown to accumulate in the environment and human body, causing health problems.
