NZ - Board stands by fluoride adverts

Board stands by fluoride adverts
Peter de Graaf | 25th April 2010
Anti-fluoride campaigners have lodged a complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority about a series of health board ads backing fluoridation.
With a Far North District Council survey of households hooked up to town water supplies in Kaitaia and Kaikohe due to close on Friday, both sides in the debate have been stepping up their efforts to influence the public.
The Northland District Health Board has been taking out ads in the Kaitaia-based Northland Age, and the Fluoride Action Network has retaliated with a full-page ad of its own.
Now campaigners have lodged an official complaint with the Advertising Standards Authority about five of the health board's ads.
Cliff Royal, of Kerikeri, said the health board had spent thousands of taxpayer dollars on ads which were "false and misleading in the most blatant ways".
Mr Royal said he had sent the authority 18 pages of documentation showing that fluoridation was a significant health threat, not safe as claimed by the health board.
However, the Northland District Health Board is standing by the information in its ads.
Spokeswoman Fleur King said the health board was confident its ads met the rules set down by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The health board had made sure it understood the authority's requirements before starting the campaign, and the ads had been approved by the Ministry of Health.
"But we're always happy to hear from people, and they're entitled to make a complaint," she said.
The council ran a two-year fluoridation trial in Kaitaia and Kaikohe from 2007 to 2009, paid for by the Health Ministry, amid concerns about the dire state of children's teeth in the Far North.
The survey aims to find out if townsfolk want fluoridation re-started.
If the council stopped adding fluoride without conducting a survey to find out that was what people wanted, it would have to repay the Ministry the roughly $300,000 cost of the trial.