This article was written by Nancy Wang Principal Solicitor at W & G Lawyers.
When most people hear “contaminated land,” they picture an old factory site or a fenced-off industrial yard — someone else’s problem, somewhere else. The reality is closer to home. The kind of contamination now making headlines can sit quietly in the soil of an ordinary suburban block or a rural property, and it can travel underground from a source kilometres away to land beneath a home that had nothing to do with it.
That matters for anyone buying or selling property in Queensland, especially now that the rules about what a seller must disclose have changed.
WHAT IS PFAS?
PFAS — short for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances — are man-made chemicals used since the 1940s in everyday products like non-stick cookware, waterproof clothing, food packaging and cosmetics, and, most significantly, in firefighting foams used for decades at airports, refineries and defence bases.
They are often called “forever chemicals” because they do not break down easily. Once released, they stay in the environment for years — and they build up over time in soil, water, plants, animals and the human body.
PFAS has been back in the national spotlight recently, with the Australian Government suing the manufacturer 3M for more than $2 billion over contamination from firefighting foam at defence bases — the largest legal claim the Government has ever brought. The Department of Defence says it has already spent more than $1.3 billion responding to the problem. That gives a sense of how serious — and how expensive — contamination can become once it surfaces.
WHY IT’S CLOSER THAN YOU REALISE
Two features of PFAS make it an everyday issue rather than a distant one.
First, it is genuinely widespread. Because these chemicals were used in so many common products and do not break down, they can be detected at low levels in soils almost everywhere. They are, quite literally, in many homes already.
Second — and this is the part that catches property owners out — contamination does not stay put. PFAS contamination usually begins at the surface, soaks down through the soil, and reaches the underground water table. From there it forms a “plume” that moves with the groundwater, sometimes travelling a long way from where it started. In some cases contamination has spread kilometres from its original source.
The practical consequence is this: you do not have to live next door to a factory or a defence base to be affected. Contamination can be sitting in the land you own, or it can arrive beneath your property through the groundwater, carried from a source you have never heard of. Bores and wells that draw on an affected aquifer can pick it up even when they are well away from the source — which matters for anyone who uses bore water for drinking, the garden, stock or a hobby farm, and for anyone growing food or keeping animals on the land.
Health authorities here and overseas are treating PFAS exposure as a genuine public health concern. Research has linked long-term exposure to effects including higher cholesterol, liver and kidney impacts, lower birth weight and an increased risk of some cancers. The science is still developing, but it is enough that governments are regulating, testing and, as the 3M case shows, litigating.
WHY IT MATTERS WHEN YOU BUY OR SELL
Standard property checks — title, rates, planning — tell you a lot, but they were never designed to reveal environmental contamination. That information usually sits in separate registers and datasets a routine conveyancing search does not reach.
For a buyer, undetected contamination can affect how you are allowed to use the land, what it is worth, and whether you can develop it — and the cost of investigating and cleaning it up can fall on whoever owns the property at the time, even if they did not cause it. For a seller, an issue that surfaces at the wrong moment can derail the sale entirely.
QUEENSLAND’S NEW RULES: THE FORM 2 SELLER DISCLOSURE
The timing matters, because Queensland’s property rules changed on 1 August 2025. The Property Law Act 2023 ended the old “buyer beware” approach and now requires sellers to disclose far more, upfront.
If you are selling, you must now give the buyer a completed Form 2 Seller Disclosure Statement, together with certain supporting certificates, before the buyer signs the contract. Among other things, the Form 2 must state whether the property is recorded on Queensland’s two contamination registers — the Environmental Management Register or the Contaminated Land Register — and whether any environmental notices or orders apply. In practice, that means checking your property’s status and disclosing it accurately, rather than hoping the issue does not arise.
If you are buying, the Form 2 is your first and best chance to understand a property’s environmental history before you commit. It is worth reading carefully — and, where contamination is a possibility, backing up with proper searches, because not every affected property is formally recorded on a register, especially where contamination has migrated in from somewhere else.
YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THE CONTRACT
The new rules have real teeth, and they flow straight through to whether a deal can be unwound.
If a seller fails to give a complete Form 2 and the required certificates before the buyer signs — or if the disclosure is seriously wrong or incomplete on an important matter — the buyer can cancel the contract at any time before settlement.
Separately, Queensland law has long required a seller to tell the buyer in writing if the land is on a contamination register before the sale is agreed. If that is not done, the buyer may pull out. If the seller discloses it late, after signing, the buyer generally has a limited window — 21 business days from receiving the notice — to cancel, after which the right is lost.
For a buyer, that can mean the right to walk away, get their money back and unwind the transaction. For a seller, it means an overlooked contamination issue is not a minor slip — it can collapse the sale close to settlement. Either way, the lesson is the same: it is far better to find out early. A contamination issue spotted before contracts are signed is something you can negotiate around, plan for, or decide to avoid. The same issue discovered after settlement can become a problem the new owner is stuck with.
HOW W & G LAWYERS CAN HELP
Whether you are buying or selling, contamination is no longer something you can safely assume away — and the consequences of getting disclosure wrong now sit firmly within the contract.
If you are selling, W & G Lawyers can help you understand and meet your disclosure obligations, prepare your Form 2 and the necessary certificates correctly, and arrange the right searches, so an avoidable error does not give a buyer the right to terminate. If you are buying, we can review the Form 2 and your contract, advise on what the disclosures (and any gaps) actually mean for you, arrange contaminated land and environmental searches, and tell you where you stand on your rights to terminate or recover your deposit if something has not been disclosed. And if contamination comes to light after a contract is signed — or after settlement — we can advise on your options and, where needed, act for you in a dispute.
The 3M case is a dramatic headline, but the everyday lesson is practical: contamination rewards those who find out early and catches out those who find out too late. If you are about to buy or sell, talk to us before you sign.
Reference
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This article is general information only and does not constitute legal advice under Australian law. For advice specific to your situation, please contact W & G Lawyers. For further details, please click here to view our disclaimer.