The best synbio projects, including iGEM teams, have one thing in common: cutting edge science in the light of carefully considered societal needs.

According to a survey by RIVM , 27,000 people were infected with Lyme disease in 2017. In 2014, the last time RIVM reported on the incidence of tick-borne disease, this number was 25,000.

The societal costs of Lyme disease have been determined for the Netherlands for the first time. The disease appears to cost nearly EUR 20 million each year.

One in 5 tick bites occurs in an urban area. Although most tick bites occur in the countryside, many people are bitten in urban areas as well.

Researcher Dr Guus Velders of RIVM has made the Nature top-10 list of 2016. This means that, according to Nature, he was one of the 10 most influential scientists in 2016.

Scientific research by RIVM’s Guus Velders stood partly at the basis of the HFC global climate agreement.

For the first time, a person in the Netherlands has fallen ill after a bite from a tick carrying the tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBE virus).

Without global agreement on the use of HFCs, their contribution to the greenhouse effect may increase sharply to 10 percent of that of CO2 by 2050. The current contribution is less than 1 percent.

At the start of the “Tick Awareness Week”, the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM) and Wageningen UR are commencing a large-scale study on the long-term effects of

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are potent greenhouse gases used in refrigerators and air conditioners and are released primarily at the end of the life-span of these products.