Kennedy fluoride move greeted

Anti-fluoride campaigners are claiming another victory as the United States administration takes an increasingly negative view of the use of the chemical.

The latest move has seen US Health Secretary Robert Kennedy announcing plans to tell the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to stop recommending fluoridation.

Kennedy’s views on vaccines and the Covid vaccine in particular have seen him clash with health professionals, but he was given an influential health role in the Trump administration.

The timing is significant for New Zealand because a host of councils, including Waip? in Cambridge, have been instructed by the health ministry to add fluoride to water supplies.

Some have objected, Waip? has not – and that riles Te Awamutu-Kihikihi Community Board deputy chair Kane Titchener, a leading anti-fluoride campaigner with Fluoride Free NZ.

His efforts to encourage the council to push bank on the fluoridation order – as several councils are doing – have to date been ignored.

In February he stood with US lawyer Michael Connett who at a meeting in Cambridge discussed neurotoxicity, skeletal and dental fluorosis. Anti-fluoride groups regard his success in arguing in a legal battle that there was credible evidence that fluoridation posed a health risk was a breakthrough moment.

“You just start to wonder what it is going to take for the Waip? District Council to protect the unborn children and infants in Cambridge,” Titchener told The News last week.

“I mean, they can’t even write a letter to the Director General of Health sharing their concerns. In my view they need to support Rotorua District Council’s call for an inquiry at this point. The Waip? District Council needs to act urgently, fluoridation is a matter of months away now.”

Board neutral on water option

24 Apr 25