South Asia’s PFAS Challenge: Industrial Growth Meets Water Insecurity
South Asia is home to over 1.8 billion people—nearly a quarter of humanity—and is experiencing rapid industrial growth that is increasingly introducing PFAS into water systems that already face severe contamination challenges from arsenic, nitrates, and microbial pathogens. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan host major textile manufacturing, electronics assembly, and leather tanning industries that use PFAS-containing chemicals, while military operations and expanding urban infrastructure add to PFAS contamination sources. The intersection of high population density, limited water treatment capacity, and growing industrial PFAS use creates a public health situation of significant concern that has received far less international attention than PFAS contamination in Western nations.
Textile Industry PFAS: South Asia’s Industrial Backbone
South Asia’s textile sector—producing garments for global brands including H&M, Zara, Nike, and Gap—is one of the world’s largest users of PFAS durable water repellent (DWR) treatments and fluorinated processing chemicals. Bangladesh’s garment industry—employing over 4 million workers and generating 80% of the country’s export earnings—concentrates hundreds of textile finishing facilities along the Buriganga, Turag, and Balu rivers near Dhaka. Studies of these rivers have detected PFAS at concentrations reflecting industrial discharge, with downstream impacts on communities using river water for drinking, bathing, and irrigation. The Korail and Savar industrial zones, particularly dense with dyeing and finishing operations, have produced some of the most elevated PFAS surface water readings documented in South Asia.
India’s textile manufacturing hubs—including Tirupur (knitwear), Surat (synthetic textiles), Ludhiana (hosiery), and Ahmedabad (cotton processing)—represent major PFAS discharge points. The Noyyal River flowing through Tirupur has been extensively studied for textile chemical contamination; PFAS monitoring in this river system is beginning to document the PFAS component of the complex contamination mixture associated with decades of textile dyeing and finishing discharges.
Military Contamination in the Region
India’s extensive network of air force and naval bases—including major installations at Sulur, Ambala, Hindan, and INS Garuda—has used AFFF in fire training and emergency response, producing PFAS groundwater contamination consistent with patterns documented globally at military aviation facilities. India’s military PFAS contamination has received limited public investigation compared to Western countries, reflecting both lower environmental monitoring investment and restricted access to military base environmental data. Pakistan’s Air Force bases at Peshawar, Kamra, and Masroor similarly represent potential contamination sources that are essentially uncharacterized from a public health perspective.
The combination of military PFAS sources and agricultural water use—India and Pakistan’s heavy reliance on groundwater for irrigation means that military PFAS plumes can reach agricultural soils and food crops through irrigation pathways—creates exposure scenarios that compound water ingestion risks. The inadequacy of current PFAS monitoring infrastructure to characterize these exposures in populations of hundreds of millions represents a significant global public health data gap.
Regulatory Development and International Engagement
India has taken initial steps toward PFAS regulation through the Bureau of Indian Standards and the Central Pollution Control Board’s emerging contaminant monitoring initiatives. PFAS have been added to India’s list of priority pollutants for monitoring consideration, though binding drinking water standards with enforcement mechanisms remain under development. Bangladesh’s Department of Environment has begun including PFAS in industrial effluent monitoring requirements for major textile export zones, driven partly by EU importers’ requirements for PFAS-free supply chains. International cooperation frameworks including the South Asian Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP) and bilateral technical assistance programs with Japan, Germany, and the United States are beginning to include PFAS monitoring capacity building as components of water quality development assistance.