Sealing guide · Perth
What does PFAS-free sealer actually mean?
PFAS-free means the sealer has none of the fluorine-based forever chemicals that older oil-repelling sealers relied on. Those chemicals are now being regulated out, so here is what PFAS is, why it is being banned, and the honest difference between a sealer that is PFAS-free by design and one that was reformulated in a hurry.
The short answer
No forever chemicals in the bottle.
PFAS-free means the sealer contains no per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances: the family of fluorine-based chemicals nicknamed forever chemicals because they do not break down. It matters on a sealer specifically because the products that used to repel oil on stone did it with fluoropolymer chemistry, and that is PFAS. So PFAS-free is not a wellness sticker. It tells you the oil resistance is coming from somewhere other than the chemistry now being banned.
The part worth reading twice: there is a real difference between a sealer that was built PFAS-free from the start and one that had its fluorine stripped out late to keep selling under the same name. Same label, different product. The rest of this page is how to tell them apart.
The plain-English version
What PFAS is, and why it is being phased out.
You do not need chemistry to follow this. Three things explain the whole story.
What it is
A family of fluorine chemicals
PFAS stands for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances: a large group of man-made chemicals built around an unusually strong carbon-fluorine bond. That bond is why they repel water and oil so well, which is exactly why industry loved them, in non-stick pans, waterproof jackets, firefighting foam and, yes, stone sealers.
Why it is a problem
They do not break down
The same tough bond that makes them useful also means nature can barely break them apart. So they linger, in soil, in water and in living things, building up over years. That is where the forever chemicals nickname comes from, and it is the reason regulators moved on them.
What has changed
The worst of them are banned
Australia has banned the import, manufacture and use of three of the most studied PFAS chemicals, PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS, with the ban taking effect in 2025. As the rules tighten, the old fluorine-based oil repellency is being pulled off the shelf along with them.
Why sealers, of all things
Oil was the hard part. Fluorine was the shortcut.
Water is easy to bead off almost anything. Oil and grease are the marks that actually stay: the barbecue splash, the dropped cooking oil, the greasy hand on a benchtop. For years the only sealers that genuinely repelled oil on stone got there with fluoropolymer chemistry, which is PFAS. Take the fluorine away and, for a lot of products, the oil resistance goes with it.
The old oil trick was fluorine
A fluoropolymer lowers the surface so far that even oil cannot spread and grip. It worked. It is also PFAS, and it is the exact performance now being regulated out. That is why so many sealers are quietly getting worse at oil, not better.
There is another way to repel oil
MineralProtect is a mineral sol-gel. Instead of laying a fluorine film, it anchors into the mineral and pore structure and keeps oil and grease sitting on top, so a spill lifts off in cleaning rather than soaking in and staining. It gets the outcome fluorine used to give you, without the fluorine.
This is a genuinely different chemistry
It is not a tweaked version of the old fluorine sealers. It is the one and only next-generation sol-gel surface protective coating in Australia, and nothing else works quite like it. That is why it can be oil-resistant and PFAS-free at the same time.
That is the short version. The full chemistry of how a mineral sol-gel bonds and repels is in stone and sealer chemistry, and every class of sealer is set side by side in sealer types compared.
The distinction that matters
By design, not by reformulation.
When a whole class of chemistry gets banned, brands respond in one of two ways. Some strip the fluorine out of an existing recipe as fast as they can and keep the same label, hoping nobody notices the oil resistance slipped. Others were never built on fluorine in the first place. On the shelf both say PFAS-free. On your stone they do not perform the same. Here is how to read the difference.
- Reformulated in a hurry. Fluorine pulled out late to meet the rules and keep the name. Often quietly weaker at oil than the version it replaced, because the thing that repelled oil was the thing that got removed.
- PFAS-free by design. Built without fluorine from the start, repelling oil through a different mechanism entirely. Nothing was removed, so nothing was lost. That is where JUMBOGUARD sits.
- The tell is the performance claim. A genuine by-design product can still stand behind its oil resistance because it never depended on the banned chemistry. A hasty reformulation tends to go quiet on oil and lean on water beading instead.
- The proof is independent testing. Compliance you can check beats a sticker you have to trust. JUMBOGUARD is tested at independent houses for REACH and low-VOC compliance, so PFAS-free is a documented fact, not a marketing line.
One honest point
PFAS-free is a floor, not the whole story.
PFAS-free tells you what is not in the bottle. It does not, on its own, tell you the sealer is any good. Plenty of weak, short-lived sealers are perfectly PFAS-free simply because they never did much in the first place. So treat it as a baseline you should expect from any modern product, then judge the sealer on what it actually does: whether it resists oil as well as water, whether it holds up under Perth sun and cleaning, and whether it is backed by more than a label. PFAS-free and genuinely protective is the combination worth paying for. PFAS-free on its own is just the price of entry.
See it on your surface
Where oil resistance actually counts.
The PFAS question matters most on the porous stone that oil can stain for good. These are the surfaces where a genuinely oil-resistant, PFAS-free seal earns its keep in Perth. Start with yours.
Natural stone · optimal
Limestone
Perth's soft, thirsty Tamala limestone soaks up oil fast and needs to breathe. See the PFAS-free seal that anchors into the surface and keeps oil sitting on top.
Read the guideNatural stone · optimal
Travertine
The classic pool surround and alfresco stone, right where cooking oil, sunscreen and food spills land. Here is how the coating repels oil without fluorine.
Read the guideNatural stone · optimal
Sandstone
Open and absorbent, the kind of stone where an oil mark can become permanent. See the PFAS-free protection that keeps spills on the surface.
Read the guidePFAS, answered
The real questions.
What does PFAS-free mean on a sealer?
PFAS-free means the sealer contains no per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, the family of fluorine-based chemicals nicknamed forever chemicals because they do not break down in the environment. It matters on a sealer because the products that used to repel oil on stone did it with fluoropolymer chemistry, which is PFAS. A PFAS-free sealer delivers protection without any of that fluorine. The honest detail worth checking is whether it is PFAS-free by design, built that way from the start, or reformulated in a hurry to drop the fluorine and keep the label, because those are not the same thing.
What is PFAS and why is it being banned?
PFAS stands for per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances, a large family of man-made chemicals built around very strong carbon-fluorine bonds. That bond is what makes them so good at repelling water and oil, and also what makes them a problem: they barely break down, so they build up in soil, water and living things over time, which earned them the nickname forever chemicals. Because of that persistence, governments are regulating the worst of them out. Australia has banned the import, manufacture and use of three of the most studied ones, PFOA, PFOS and PFHxS, with the ban taking effect in 2025.
What do PFAS have to do with stone and glass sealers?
For years, the only sealers that genuinely repelled oil as well as water on stone used fluoropolymer chemistry, which is PFAS. Water alone is easy to bead off. Oil and grease are the hard part, and fluorine was the shortcut that worked. So as PFAS is regulated out, a lot of the old oil-repelling performance is being pulled off the shelf with it. The question for any modern sealer is how it repels oil now that fluorine is off the table. For how a mineral sol-gel answers that, see stone and sealer chemistry.
Does PFAS-free mean the sealer repels oil less?
Not necessarily, and that is the whole point. A sealer that only dropped its fluorine to get a PFAS-free label may well repel oil less than it used to. A sealer engineered to be PFAS-free from the start solves the oil problem a different way. MineralProtect is a mineral sol-gel that anchors into the mineral and pore structure and keeps oil and grease sitting on top so they lift off in cleaning instead of soaking in. It delivers oil resistance without fluorine, by design rather than by reformulation.
How do I know a PFAS-free sealer is genuinely fluorine-free?
Ask two things. First, is it PFAS-free by design or by reformulation, meaning was it built without fluorine from the start or was the fluorine stripped out of an existing recipe late. Second, has it been tested by independent laboratories for compliance, rather than just relabelled. JUMBOGUARD is PFAS-free by design and tested at independent houses for REACH and low-VOC compliance, so the oil resistance does not depend on the chemistry that is being banned.
Keep reading
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Oil-resistant, and PFAS-free by design.
We prepare and seal your stone with MineralProtect at $16/m² all-in, registered under a 10-year guarantee. Real oil resistance, no forever chemicals, tested for compliance rather than just relabelled.