The former Director-General of Health has expressed his surprise and disappointment about Wellington Water again failing to to meet its fluoride targets.
Earlier this week it was revealed Wellington Water has not been consistently fluoridating water in Lower Hutt and Wellington without directly informing residents.
Sir Ashley Bloomfield, the former director-general of health wrote on X (formerly Twitter), that he was “genuinely surprised and disappointed”.
“Fluoridation is important for the dental health of tamariki, especially disadvantaged kids,” he wrote. “And I had hoped Wellington Water had learnt from its earlier episode that it should keep people informed.”
The drop in fluoride levels affected residents in most suburbs of Lower Hutt and Wellington since October 2023, and the water supply has failed to consistently meet the target level of fluoride recommended by the Ministry of Health.
In November and December the target for fluoride was met only about 50% of the time at the Gear Island plant, supplying most of Lower Hutt and Wellington.
In most months of 2023, fluoridation at Gear Island had not been consistent enough to meet the Ministry of Health target 95% of the time.
Wellington Water chief executive Tonia Haskell earlier said “a number of smaller incidents [had] a cumulative impact”.
She said the issue would be resolved in the “next few months”, once Wellington Water had sourced suitable pumps from Germany for the Gear Island treatment plant.
“We let people know when we have to turn fluoride off at any of the plants and notify our key stakeholders if an outage has a significant impact on our ability to meet the MoH target levels,” Haskell said.
In 2022 Wellington Water revealed a fluoride failure which was met by outrage from local leaders and dental health experts. At that point water was unfluoridated for almost a year and had been patchy dating all the way back to 2016.
An independent inquiry into the failure found the issue was treated with a lack of urgency by Wellington Water and there was a culture of “learned helplessness” within the organisation.
Original article online at: https://www.thepost.co.nz/nz-news/350194491/sir-ashley-bloomfield-expresses-disappointment-over-fluoridation-issue