Dental News - Water fluoridation receives generous funding in NZ budget

Water fluoridation receives generous funding in NZ budget

The New Zealand federal government's upcoming budget will commit NZ$12 million to help build the infrastructure need to fluoridate water. (Photograph: Brasil Creativo/Shutterstock)

Dental Tribune International

Mon. 19. June 2017

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand: The dental well-being of New Zealand’s population has just been given a boost. Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman has announced that the federal government’s 2017 budget will commit NZ$12 million (US$8.66 million) over the next four years to help build the infrastructure needed to fluoridate drinking water.

Though fluoride occurs naturally in much of New Zealand’s drinking water, it is at a much lower level than in many other countries. When announcing the funding, Coleman stressed that just
54 per cent of the country’s population who rely on public drinking water receive it with sufficient fluoridation.

“Increasing access to fluoridated water will improve oral health and mean fewer costly trips to the dentist,” Coleman said.

“We know that children have up to 40 per cent less tooth decay in fluoridated areas compared to areas without fluoride. This change would benefit over 1.4 million New Zealanders who live in areas where networked community water supplies are not currently fluoridated.”

Despite an abundance of scientific research demonstrating its efficacy, water fluoridation has become somewhat of an international hot-button issue recently. Earlier this year, a number of anti-fluoride groups submitted a petition to the US Environmental Protection Agency that asked for the cessation of fluoride addition to water, as they believe it presents a considerable neurotoxic risk. Closer to New Zealand, the state government for Queensland in Australia enacted a series of legislative measures from 2012 to 2014 that made the fluoridation of drinking water a non-compulsory measure.

However, New Zealand appears to be opposing this trend, based on a 2014 study by the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Sir Peter Gluckman, and the Royal Society of New Zealand that concluded that fluoridating water at the recommended levels has been proven to have an overall positive effect on dental health.