A town being listed as "fluoridated" doesn't guarantee residents are getting fluoride at the intended dose. Utilities publish their own measurements, and when you read them, a pattern appears: equipment failures, maintenance pauses and dosing problems that can leave water far below target for months.
This matters whichever side of the debate you're on. People who rely on fluoridated water aren't getting what they're told. People who object to it may be filtering water that barely contains any. And the dental studies used to justify fluoridation assume the dose is actually being delivered.
What the numbers show
- Brisbane and Ipswich (Mt Crosby, Seqwater): Seqwater reported a fluoride dosing disruption at Mt Crosby caused by an equipment structural failure. In September 2026, samples at Camerons Hill ranged from 0.07 to 0.79 mg/L, averaging 0.41, against a south-east Queensland target of 0.8 mg/L. Other Seqwater plants, such as North Pine (0.70) and Landers Shute (0.72), were close to target.
- Broken Hill (Essential Water): new dosing equipment went in on 16 June 2024 after an outage. In 2026, readings were 0.10 to 0.70 mg/L in the March quarter and averaged 0.16 mg/L in the June quarter, against a NSW range of 0.9 to 1.5. We now list Broken Hill as effectively unfluoridated.
- Burnie (TasWater): averaged 0.74 mg/L in 2024-25, the only one of Tasmania's 38 fluoridated systems below the 0.8 mg/L legal minimum, because of operational issues.
- Nambucca Valley: 2024 monitoring averaged 0.56 mg/L.
- Hay: 2025 monitoring averaged 0.58 mg/L, with some below-target results.
- Batlow: 2025 report shows 0.40 mg/L, though from just two samples.
Who's checking?
Each state sets a target range: 0.9 to 1.5 mg/L in NSW, 0.8 to 1.1 in Tasmania, around 0.8 in south-east Queensland. Utilities report to their health departments, and Tasmania's Economic Regulator publishes system-by-system compliance, which is how Burnie's shortfall became public. Most states don't publish anything comparable, so readers have to dig through individual quarterly PDFs.
That is what we do. Every figure above comes from a utility's own published report, linked below and on each town's page.