After recording 80,000 tick bites in 10 years via Tekenradar.nl, we now know that you are most likely to be bitten by a tick in Drenthe. Quickly removing the tick halves the chance of contracting Lyme disease.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the outbreak of the West Nile Virus in 2020 show that so-called emerging zoonoses pose a risk to the Netherlands.

More than a quarter of people with Lyme disease continue to have long-term symptoms that lead to limitations in daily life even after treatment.

Each year, at the request of the Netherlands Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority, RIVM prepares an overview of the most important zoonoses and indicates their prevalence in the Netherlands.

Every year about 1.5 million ticks bite someone in the Netherlands, especially between March and October. Most people will not get sick of that.

The focus of our annual report State of Zoonotic Diseases 2018 is prevention, with the emphasis on the production chains of foods of animal origin.

RIVM has derived temporary background values for two types of PFAS in Dutch soil: PFOS (perfluorooctane sulfonate) and PFOA (perfluoro octanoic acid).

In the coming weeks, RIVM will derive a temporary background value for PFAS in Dutch soil. This will be done based on measurement data from the provinces in the Netherlands.

At the beginning of 2019, the RIVM measured the air quality around the landfill at Philipsburg, Sint Maarten for two weeks. No or hardly any harmful substances were measured.

Young people (13-18 years) who use light-emitting screens daily in the hour before going to sleep have more sleep problems.