News Archive

The State Government may compel rural communities to put fluoride in their water in a bid to cut tooth decay and counter a burgeoning demand on the public dental system. Health Minister Bronwyn Pike said if water boards in areas such as Geelong, Ballarat and Wodonga failed to introduce fluoride, the Government could be forced […]

QUEENSLAND toddlers have more rotting teeth than children living interstate and their dental health is getting worse every year. A major new study of children’s dental records has found the average five-year-old Queenslander has more than two decayed, missing or filled teeth – almost twice the national average. Of the 53,000 Queensland children between five […]

Increasing consumption of bottled water and junk food could be to blame for the continuing decline in the dental health of Australia’s children, experts said yesterday. Five-year-olds experienced a 22 per cent increase in decayed baby teeth over the past four years, while six-year-olds had an 8 per cent increase in the same period, a […]

INCREASED consumption of bottled water may be contributing to a marked decline in the dental health of young Australian children. A national study has found an increase in decayed, missing or filled baby teeth during the 1990s. The Child Dental Health Survey, Australia 1999: Trends across the 1990s compared 372,000 children with previous studies. It […]

Last year, the Association for Science in the Public Interest (June 2001) and the American College of Toxicology (November 2001) both held debates on the policy of water fluoridation – which my dad, Paul Connett, attended. The debates never took place, however, as both organizations, despite sending invitations to the main institutions in the US […]

The people of Mount Alexander Shire have won a battle to stop fluoride being added to their water supply. Coliban Water has heeded petitions and newspaper polls rejecting fluoride, as part of an $80 million upgrade of central Victoria’s water supplies. The chairman of Coliban Water, Gordon McKern, says the water authority has listened to […]

When the Queensland Government introduced new rules to track industrial waste there was one notable loophole. If waste was being transported “to a farm for use as a soil conditioner or fertiliser” it was exempted from state regulations. The Queensland laws, which mainly benefit the $1.3 billion sugar industry, best illustrate the strange contradictions that […]

PRESCHOOLERS in WA are having to undergo major dental work, including emergency extractions, because their teeth have decayed beyond repair. New research shows about 40 per cent of five year olds in WA have tooth decay and 12 per cent were suffering from severe tooth decay. Six per cent of the 1575 children surveyed were […]