Prevention is better than cure, and there is broad consensus among medical, health and scientific experts that water fluoridation is both a safe and effective way of preventing dental caries.

Fluoridation can also help overcome the profound inequalities that exist in oral health, and reduce the financial burden of oral disease.

Good oral health is essential to good general health. But maintaining good oral health is not simply a matter of taking personal responsibility and following good habits; children rely on adults to do the right thing for them, and the state of our health is significantly determined by social, geographic and economic forces that are often beyond individual control.

Those suffering the poorest oral health are people living in rural and remote areas, people with additional or specialised health care needs, the socially disadvantaged, families on low incomes and Indigenous Australians. It is those people, as well as children and the elderly, who are particularly vulnerable to tooth decay, who stand to benefit the most from fluoride in the water, which offers dental health benefits to everyone who drinks it.

Preventing tooth decay in children is particularly important. Dental caries is the most common chronic infectious disease in childhood, causing pain and discomfort and often requiring complex and costly treatment.

And because poor oral health in early life is the strongest predictor of oral disease in adulthood, reducing childhood tooth decay gives people the best chance of keeping healthy teeth for life.

Children in areas without water fluoridation are known to have more tooth decay than children who grow up drinking fluoridated tap water. Dental health professionals treating the children of Oberon say they have significantly more decay than children in fluoridated Bathurst.

Fluoridation has the potential to close that gap, with the National Health and Medical Research Council finding that fluoridation reduces tooth decay by up to 44 per cent in children.

As expert health organisations and professional bodies working to improve Australians’ health, we recommend fluoridation as a safe, cost-effective and equitable way to protect against tooth decay.

We ask councillors to consider the wealth of evidence demonstrating that water fluoridation at Australian levels is safe, as well as the positive impact this proven public health measure would have on the lives of Oberon residents, now and in the future – and vote in favour of fluoridation.