PFAS map of the Netherlands: where is PFAS found?

Reading time: ~12 minutes

What is the PFAS map of the Netherlands?

That last point is the most important sentence in this entire article, and it is almost never said. A PFAS map is a map of observations. A blank spot does not mean there is no PFAS, but that no sample has been taken. Anyone who reads the map as a risk map for their own street is reading it wrong.

The underlying dataset comes from the RIVM and is publicly accessible via the Atlas Leefomgeving, the government's joint mapping portal. There are also private and educational maps that visualise the same government data differently. So they largely show the same thing, dressed up differently.

PFAS are not a natural phenomenon, incidentally. The RIVM puts it strictly: these substances are man-made and do not occur naturally in the environment. So everything you see on the map got there through human activity. At PureFilter we notice that this realisation is exactly the moment people want to understand their own water better.

What PFAS maps are there, and which one do you use for what?

There are three types of sources, and they answer three different questions. Anyone who opens the wrong map gets an answer to a question they did not ask.

The third row is the most important and the least used. Evides, for example, publishes the measured perfluorinated compounds per source and per production location, from the Maas and the Haringvliet to Berenplaat, Kralingen, Ouddorp and Midden-Zeeland. That is not a map with colours, but it is the figure that concerns your glass.

Where is most PFAS found in the Netherlands?

Short answer: around point sources. Diffuse spread via air and rain causes a low background level across almost all of the Netherlands, but the striking values on the map cluster around three types of locations.

Industrial sources. The fluorochemical factory in Dordrecht, now Chemours, is the best known. Around that factory, PFOA levels in the soil are clearly higher than elsewhere. Further southwest, the history of discharges into the Scheldt plays a role, giving the Westerschelde and parts of Zeeland a story of their own.

Firefighting foam sites. PFAS-containing firefighting foam was used for decades at airports, defence sites and fire stations. At those locations it has sunk through the soil into the groundwater. These are sharply defined, local contaminations, and exactly the type you see reflected on a measurement location map.

Cross-border inflow. The Netherlands lies downstream. PFAS enters the country from Germany and Belgium via the Maas, the Rhine and the air. That is why the sources of drinking water companies that run on river water are structurally somewhat more heavily burdened than groundwater extractions.

What the map does and doesn't say about your tap water

Most people who open a PFAS map really only want to know one thing: is it in my tap water? The map gives no answer to that, and that is not a shortcoming but a matter of what has actually been measured.

Your tap water follows a route that the map does not track. Groundwater or river water is pumped up, purified at a production location and then distributed via the pipe network. The PFAS concentration in your glass therefore depends on which production location supplies you, not on the soil under your garden. Two houses on the same street can be on the same network, while two villages twenty kilometres apart run on different sources.

If you want to know whether your drinking water comes from groundwater or from surface water, that is shown on the Source of drinking water map from the Atlas Leefomgeving. That is the map you are actually looking for if you are worried about your tap. We set out that logic for the country's largest supplier in our piece about Vitens's water quality, and the same method works for any other water company.

How much PFAS is allowed in drinking water?

Here three numbers get mixed up, and that explains why one article says everything is fine while another says the standard is being exceeded. They both have a point, because they test against a different value.

The statutory quality requirements are set out in the Drinkwaterbesluit. For twenty different PFAS, the permitted amount is 100 nanograms per litre, and Dutch drinking water meets this, reports the RIVM. The European Drinking Water Directive also sets a limit of 500 nanograms per litre for the total of PFAS types, explains Evides.

In addition, since new scientific insights into effects on the immune system, the RIVM advises a much stricter guideline value: 4.4 nanograms per litre, expressed in PFOA equivalents. That conversion is done using the RPF method, which allows a mixture of PFAS to be assessed as a group instead of substance by substance. The difference between 100 and 4.4 is therefore not a disagreement about measurements, but the difference between a statutory limit and a health-based recommendation.

And then there is another figure you rarely see: the European food safety authority EFSA derived a health-based limit of 4.4 nanograms per kilogram of body weight per week for PFOS, PFOA, PFNA and PFHxS combined, according to the RIVM. That concerns your total intake from everything you eat and drink, not a concentration in water.

Where is most PFAS found in drinking water?

In drinking water made from surface water. That is the rule of thumb, and it is well substantiated. About sixty percent of Dutch drinking water comes from groundwater, and this contains less PFAS than drinking water from surface water, according to the RIVM. If you live in an area that runs on groundwater, you are therefore, by definition, on the favourable side.

The figures are also public for the surface water side. Evides draws its water mainly from the Maas and the Haringvliet and reports that all measured values are below the applicable drinking water standards, including the new European standard that comes into effect in January 2026. The industry association Vewin covers the broader picture on drinking water quality and standards.

More important for most households is the ratio. People in the Netherlands mainly take in PFAS through food and only a little through drinking water, writes the RIVM. Food contributes about three times as much as drinking water. For drinking water alone, the intake is below the health-based limit. For food and drinking water combined, it is above it, and that is precisely why the advice is to reduce total intake rather than fixate on a single source. How much water you need per day does not change any of that: how much you drink is a health matter, and how clean that water is a separate one. We work through that in how much water you need per day.

How to check your own address in four steps

This is the route that actually produces an answer, in the right order.

1. First determine your water source: open the Source of drinking water map and check whether your postcode runs on groundwater or surface water. This is the step that explains the most.
2. Then look up your water company's measurement report, because every drinking water company publishes water quality data per production location. Evides, for example, does this per source and per treatment plant, with the PFAS results in nanograms per litre.
3. Check the soil map for your garden, not for your tap: for moving soil, a vegetable garden or your own chickens, the RIVM's measurement location map is the right source. If you are near a known point source, that is the moment to call the municipality or the GGD.
4. Only decide about filtering after that, because the question of which filter makes sense only makes sense once you know what your source is and what is being measured. We have set the options side by side in the guide on how to choose the right one from the types of water filters.

Those four steps also contain the reason a national map can never be your whole answer. The map is the first step, not the last.

PFAS zones, your own eggs and the vegetable garden

Where the PFAS map does become directly practical is with what comes out of your own ground. And there the figures are a lot sharper than for drinking water.

The RIVM advises not eating eggs from privately kept chickens. The evidence is hard: at 31 of the 60 surveyed locations, people already exceed the health-based limit by eating less than one egg per week, reports the RIVM. At only two locations were four eggs per week possible without exceeding it. Eggs from the shop are monitored and contain less PFAS.

The cause is the soil, not the feed. Chickens that free-range outdoors peck up soil and eat worms and soil organisms from that ground. The RIVM therefore names a run with a hard floor as a measure that can reduce the amount. The chicken's drinking water and parts of the coop can also contain PFAS.

The same principle applies to a vegetable garden on a smaller scale: the closer to a known point source, the more relevant the question. In the immediate vicinity of the factory in Dordrecht, the advice is not to eat vegetables from your own garden. Outside such zones, variety in what you eat is the practical advice.

What to watch out for when reading a PFAS map

We repeatedly come across four pitfalls, and they all lead to the wrong conclusion.

Measurement density is confused with risk. Around a well-known factory, intensive measurements have been taken, so there are many points. In an area that has received no attention, there are no points. That does not make the second area cleaner, only less studied.

Soil values are read as water values. Micrograms per kilogram of dry soil and nanograms per litre of water are not interchangeable. A map in one unit says nothing about the other.

The reference date is ignored. Many maps combine measurements from multiple years. Always check when the dataset was last updated, because purification technology and discharge rules have changed in recent years.

Indicative estimates are presented as measurements. Some commercial PFAS maps give ranges per province based on interpolation. That can be useful as an overview, but it is not a measurement at your address. At PureFilter, we therefore stick to what the RIVM, the Atlas Leefomgeving and the drinking water companies themselves publish, and we never cite a percentage we cannot substantiate.

What you can do yourself about PFAS in your water

You have no influence over the source itself, and work is underway on that: the Netherlands, together with four other countries, submitted a proposal for a broad European ban on the production, use and sale of PFAS, reports the RIVM. But PFAS barely break down, so what is now in the environment will remain there for decades to come.

What you can do at home falls into three categories.

• Reduce your intake via food by eating a varied diet, not using your own eggs from free-ranging chickens, and being careful with products from a known zone. This is the biggest source, so also the biggest gain.
• Limit your exposure via products by using fewer water-repellent treatments and less disposable packaging with a grease- and water-repellent coating.
• Filter your tap water, which makes sense if you want to address more than just PFAS, since the same installation also tackles limescale, chlorine taste, lead, microplastics and medicine residues.

What does not work: boiling. PFAS do not evaporate and do not break down at a hundred degrees. Boiling water concentrates the substances rather than removing them. An ordinary sieve or sediment filter also does nothing, because PFAS are dissolved in the water. Which technique does work and why, we explain at how a water filter works, and the commercial trade-off is on our page about the water filter against PFAS.

How PureFilter fits into this

We do not sell a map, nor certainty about your street. We sell a fixed filter on the cold water pipe, and the honest story about that is this.

The PureFilter Mineral+ is an under-counter filter with five stages that removes more than 100 contaminants, including PFAS, microplastics, heavy metals such as lead and copper, fluoride, nitrates, medicine residues and chlorine. It is NSF-certified to 42, 53, 61 and 372. As a final step, Swedish Mineral Rock™ adds magnesium, calcium and potassium back in, because purifying without mineralising produces flat-tasting water. It is not reverse osmosis, and that is a deliberate choice: no electricity, no waste water, no separate tap.

For a household of 1 to 3 people, that works out to roughly less than one cent per litre; for 4 to 6 people, a filter lasts about half a year and works out to roughly €0.27 per day. Installation takes 5 to 10 minutes, without a plumber and with a pair of water pump pliers; you replace the cartridge later using the supplied key. We have written that out step by step in installing a water filter yourself. If you have a boiling water tap, the filter goes ahead of the system on the cold water supply, which we explain on the page about the Quooker water filter. Anyone who wants to see what else fits under your counter will find the complete overview in the collection.

At PureFilter we see that customers mostly switch at the moment they have looked at something like a PFAS map and notice that the map does not answer their own question. Not out of fear, but because they want control over something they can decide for themselves. That is a reasonable reason, and it is the only reason we put forward.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

A PFAS map of the Netherlands is a good starting point and a poor endpoint. It tells you where measurements have been taken and where point sources are located, and that is useful for your garden, your soil and your own chickens. For the water from your tap you need to take a different route: first look up your source, then read your water company's measurement report. That is where the figures that really concern your glass are found.

The facts in proportion: 100 nanograms per litre is the statutory standard and Dutch drinking water meets it, 4.4 nanograms per litre is the stricter RIVM recommendation, sixty percent of our drinking water comes from groundwater with lower values, and food contributes about three times as much PFAS as drinking water. Anyone who wants to do something about their total intake should therefore start with their plate.

If you also want to address your tap water, that is a defensible choice once you want more than PFAS alone. The PureFilter Mineral+ removes more than 100 contaminants and adds minerals back in, for €149.00 one-off and €65.00 per year for 1 to 3 people, with 40 days of free returns and a 5-year warranty. No refilling jugs, no hauling bottles, water from your existing tap.