Difference between assigning attributes under document or section headers

When we assigned a passthrough macro to an attribute under the document header it rendered the macro output throughout the document. If it is assigned or reassigned under a section header only the macro text itself is rendered.

test.adoc (Source)

= Top level document header
:PASS: pass:normal[[green]#Pass#]
:FAIL: pass:normal[[red]#Fail#]

- Test A {PASS}
- Test B {FAIL}

== Section header
:FAIL: pass:normal[[aqua]#Fail#]
:ERROR: pass:normal[[yellow]#Error#]

- Test A {PASS}
- Test B {FAIL}
- Test C {ERROR}

test.html (Rendered)

For our use case it would be really handy to be able to define passthrough macros inside attributes under section headers.

Is the above behaviour baked in or is it possible to configure Asciidoctor to allow us to define passthrough macros in attributes under section headers and have them render?

                        <plugin>
                                <groupId>org.asciidoctor</groupId>
                                <artifactId>asciidoctor-maven-plugin</artifactId>
                                <version>1.5.2</version>
                                <executions>
                                        <execution>
                                                <id>output-html</id>
                                                <phase>generate-resources</phase>
                                                <goals>
                                                        <goal>process-asciidoc</goal>
                                                </goals>
                                                <configuration>
                                                        <backend>html5</backend>
                                                </configuration>
                                        </execution>
                                </executions>
                        </plugin>

... [show rest of quote]