Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare opened a monthlong public comment period on September 16 for a draft rule that would add PFOS and PFOA to the periodic water-quality checks required at what the law defines as "specified buildings".
The draft amends the enforcement rules of the Act on Securing Sanitary Environments in Buildings, which already obliges anyone with authority over a "specified building" to supply water meeting ministerial water-quality standards wherever water-supply equipment is installed to provide water for drinking and similar uses. The trigger is a separate move by the Ministry of the Environment, whose Reiwa 7 ordinance (No. 19) set the first drinking-water quality standards for PFOS and PFOA. The health ministry's draft folds those same two substances into Article 4, Paragraph 1, Item 4, Subitem D of the building rules, making them subject to testing once every three years.
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Public comment opens | September 16, 2026 |
| Public comment closes | October 15, 2026 |
| Planned promulgation | November 2026 |
| Planned effective date | May 2027 |
The ministry plans to promulgate the finished ordinance in November 2026 and bring it into force in May 2027, six months later. Comments are due by October 15, arriving via the e-Gov portal, email or post; the ministry accepts submissions only in Japanese and will not respond to each one individually. The stated legal basis is Article 2, Item 2(a) of the 1970 Cabinet Order implementing the building sanitation law.
What the draft does not settle, at least in the excerpt reviewed, is which detection method or reporting threshold laboratories must use once the every-three-year testing requirement takes effect. Those with authority over specified buildings have until mid-October to weigh in before the rule is finalized.