Taranaki council wins battle over fluoride
ANTI-FLUORIDE campaigners have lost a High Court legal battle to prevent a council treating its drinking water.
In a decision issued yesterday, Justice Rodney Hansen threw out claims from anti-fluoride campaigners who disputed the South Taranaki District Council’s decision to add fluoride to drinking water in Waverley and Patea.
The campaign group, New Health New Zealand, applied to review the council’s decision.
The court rejected the application on all grounds.
Justice Hansen said the purpose of local government was to enable democratic local decisionmaking and action by and on behalf of communities.
It was within the council’s legal power, and right mind, to add fluoride to drinking water, he said.
Murray Thomson, professor of dental epidemiology and public health at the University of Otago, said the judgment was sensible and ‘‘affirmed the important role of community water fluoridation in keeping New Zealanders healthy’’.
Justice Hansen quoted a decision from a case in the Illinois Supreme Court: ‘‘Fluoridation programmes, even if considered to be medication in the true sense of the word, are so necessarily and reasonably related to the common good that the rights of the individual must give way.’’
He drew analogies between fluoridation and the use of chlorine, which is an accepted public health