Scope of the panel
Nine metals, eleven analytes: arsenic and mercury are each reported in total and speciated form. Eight of the metals are limited across the HMTc standards; antimony is limited only in the baby wipes standard, a non-food product. Each page states, from the government and expert-body record, why the metal is limited.
For the plain-language rationale — the toxicological basis, the exposure reality, and the case for a certification limit, metal by metal — see why we limit each metal. The maximum levels in force are on the standards; the complete literature is on the Heavy Metal Index.
The panel at a glance
Nine metals, eleven analytes. Arsenic is reported as total arsenic and inorganic arsenic; mercury as total mercury and methylmercury. Antimony is limited only in the baby wipes standard, as an additional pass/fail row outside the eight-total claim-surface panel; no HMTc food standard limits it. Every claim analyte is equal at the gate: a product is certified only when every analyte is at or below 100% of its published government floor or disclosed read-across. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury may be named as priority toxics for toxicological clarity; that label is not a status ladder.
| Analyte | Symbol | Reported as | Panel role |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | Pb | Total elemental lead | Priority toxic |
| Cadmium | Cd | Total elemental cadmium | Priority toxic |
| Arsenic | As | Inorganic (iAs), speciated | Priority toxic |
| Mercury | Hg | Methylmercury, speciated | Priority toxic |
| Nickel | Ni | Total elemental nickel | Claim analyte |
| Tin | Sn | Total elemental tin | Claim analyte |
| Aluminum | Al | Total elemental aluminum | Claim analyte |
| Chromium | Cr | Total; Cr(VI) on trigger | Claim analyte |
| Antimony | Sb | Total elemental antimony | Baby wipes standard only |
The nine metals
A lot that exceeds any published limit cannot be certified while that result stands. Speciation is a pathway reflex and never replaces the parent total.
Lead
Lead is limited because its developmental neurotoxicity in young children has no demonstrated threshold — no agency can identify an intake or blood-lead level below which harm does not occur — so the governing frame is to minimize exposure as far as practicable, not to stay below a "safe" dose.
Reference page →Cadmium
Cadmium is limited because it is a cumulative nephrotoxicant with a biological half-life of 10 to 30 years that concentrates in the renal cortex, is classified by IARC as a Group 1 human carcinogen, and has no effective clinical treatment, so control is a prevention problem addressed by capping dietary intake.
Reference page →Arsenic
Inorganic arsenic is limited because it is an IARC Group 1 human carcinogen for which the major assessment bodies have declined to set any safe intake threshold, and current dietary exposures already sit at or above the cancer reference point EFSA derived in its 2024 reassessment.
Reference page →Mercury
Methylmercury crosses the blood-brain barrier and the placenta and accumulates in developing neural tissue, so with the prenatal and early-postnatal windows the most vulnerable and no safe threshold established for developmental neurotoxicity, dietary exposure is limited to protect the developing brain.
Reference page →Nickel
Nickel is limited because EFSA's 2020 reassessment set a chronic tolerable daily intake of 13 µg Ni/kg body weight/day on a reproductive-developmental endpoint that mean European dietary intake already exceeds, and because sensitized individuals react to oral doses far below that; contamination is largely controllable through sourcing and process control.
Reference page →Tin
Inorganic tin migrating from tinplate cans produces only an acute gastrointestinal effect, with a wide margin between regulated canned-food concentrations and the dose that reliably irritates the gut in controlled human challenge, so its maximum level functions chiefly as a sentinel for can-lining integrity rather than a guard against chronic or cumulative toxicity.
Reference page →Aluminum
Aluminium is limited because chronic dietary intake accumulates against a low tolerable weekly intake derived from animal neurotoxic, reproductive, and developmental endpoints — corroborated in humans by dialysis encephalopathy and osteomalacia — with renally impaired people, frequent antacid users, and formula-fed infants the most exposed; the resulting body burden is controllable through water treatment and process controls.
Reference page →Chromium
Trivalent chromium is a low-toxicity form assumed to dominate in food and long treated as an essential trace element, whereas hexavalent chromium is an IARC Group 1 carcinogen (established on occupational-inhalation evidence and assessed by US EPA as likely carcinogenic by the oral route), so chromium is limited only where a credible hexavalent-chromium pathway exists.
Reference page →Antimony
Antimony is limited in one HMTc standard, baby wipes, which is a non-food product; no HMTc food standard limits it. Trivalent antimony is classified by IARC as probably carcinogenic to humans, screening surveys have measured total antimony in baby-wipe materials and packaging, and a voluntary EU Ecolabel criterion sets a total-content ceiling of below 30 mg/kg that can be measured directly on the finished wipe.
Reference page →