Court of Audit Report: PFAS Contaminated Sites in Austria May Number in the Thousands

Background: Comparison with the Canton of Valais

Comparison with the Canton of Valais

Two Known Cases – and a New Candidate

Hofmann points to the Canton of Valais, where the responsible environment agency (DUW) located 187 sites at which PFAS contamination is assumed due to past use of firefighting foam. The "Neue Zürcher Zeitung" reported in May, noting that the polluter-pays principle applies there, on remediation costs of around one billion Swiss francs (approximately 1.1 billion euros) by 2045. "Wenn wir unsere Nachbarländer anschauen, kann man ableiten, dass wir auch in Österreich viele Hunderte Standorte erwarten. Möglicherweise reden wir von einer vierstelligen Zahl von Standorten", said Hofmann. Austria's area is roughly 16 times larger than that of Valais, which further supports the inverse conclusion.

Health Risks and High Remediation Costs

Two Known Cases – and a New Candidate

Those Particularly Affected Are Private Well Owners

In Austria, only two sites have actually been registered so far: Salzburg Airport and the Lebring fire department site in Styria. Both have been known since 2022, both carry classification 1 ("hohes Gefährdungspotenzial"), and they are the only two prioritized PFAS contaminated sites currently recorded in the Federal Environment Agency's contaminated sites portal. In spring, a new candidate was added with Mannswörth in Lower Austria, where OMV is considered the polluter and which is awaiting prioritization and subsequent remediation.

Research Project and Political Response

Health Risks and High Remediation Costs

PFAS are considered particularly persistent. Hofmann, who has been dealing with environmental pollutants for over 20 years, cites contact lenses or enhanced food containers as examples of the almost omnipresent substances found in many everyday products. The health consequences range from testicular cancer to liver cancer, and effects on the immune system and endocrine effects are also known. Remediation typically involves millions in damages, as a "einfache" remediation is usually technically impossible in the case of PFAS.

Those Particularly Affected Are Private Well Owners

As a particularly vulnerable group, Hofmann names the roughly ten percent of the population who obtain their drinking water from a private well and are not supplied by a water utility like the vast majority. Since 12 January 2026, water utilities with output exceeding ten cubic meters per day have been legally required to regularly monitor 20 PFAS parameters. Hofmann further demands that measurement data on PFAS in groundwater be published – including by waterworks and OMV: "Solche Daten eines öffentlichen Gutes wie Grundwasser gehören veröffentlicht - und zwar auch von den Wasserwerken und natürlich auch von der OMV. Es ist ein unerträglicher Zustand, dass diese Daten geheim gehalten werden."

Research Project and Political Response

In 2024, the project "Development of Innovative Remediation Strategies for PFAS-Contaminated Sites in Austria", known as PFASAN for short, was launched. About four years earlier, a workshop had also been held on the topic of contaminated sites in connection with PFAS firefighting foam, to which ministries and fire departments were invited. Potentially affected sites from firefighting foam use are, according to Hofmann, industrial fire brigades, fire department training grounds, and military-used sites. The Court of Audit calls for "Mehr Tempo" (more pace) on contaminated sites overall, while the Environment Ministry stated in May to the APA that no further acceleration is planned for PFAS contaminated sites.