RIVM promotes public health and consumer safety, and helps to protect the quality of the environment. We collect and collate knowledge and information from various sources, both national and international. We apply this knowledge ourselves, and we place it at the disposal of policy-makers, researchers, regulatory authorities and the general public.
In the field of tobacco and related products, the RIVM performs research and provides advice to support policy (Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport) and enforcement (the Netherlands food and Consumers Product Safety Authority, NVWA). Furthermore RIVM is WHO Collaborating Centre for Tobacco Product Regulation and Control and member of WHO TobLabNet. The institute has a fully equipped tobacco lab with e.g. two smoke and vaping machines, and analytical equipment such as HPLC, LC-MS and GC-MS. Topics we are working on include: Tobacco regulation policy advice (National – EU – WHO), implementation new TPD, chemical analysis of tobacco product composition (contents and emissions), test method development and validation (for e.g. cigarettes, e-cigarettes, water pipe (WHO–ISO–CEN; TobReg 9, sugars, flavours), assessing attractiveness and characterising flavours of tobacco and related products, exposure and risk assessment of tobacco and related products, monitoring trends in manufacturers’ ingredient lists, measuring environmental tobacco smoke to enforce smoke-free catering industry, monitoring trends in (new) tobacco- and related products, innovative in vitro testing such as air liquid interface, risk communication, human volunteer experiments.