How limits are set
Category 5 carries two native bases and the compiler is configured never to mix them. A ready-to-drink beverage is certified in the as-consumed liquid basis at single strength, and a concentrate is assessed as reconstituted to single strength, which is the basis EU 2023/915 and Codex CXS 193 already write into their juice cells and Hong Kong Cap 132V Note 11 writes into its beverage entries.
A dry leaf, dry botanical, roasted bean or beverage powder is certified in the as-sold dry-commodity basis, because that is the article the applicant packages and the lot the auditor samples. No brewing, extraction, dilution or reconstitution factor is invented in either direction: the tea-leaf lead maximum level is never applied to a brewed cup, and a ready-to-drink beverage maximum level is never applied to a dry leaf.
Where a government instrument writes the product-form split itself, HMTc preserves it rather than collapsing it: Hong Kong Cap 132V sets Tea, Green, Black at 5000 ug/kg as sold against tea beverages made from it at 200 ug/kg as consumed, and coffee beans at 500 ug/kg as sold against coffee beverages at 200 ug/kg as consumed.
Two consequences of the method are disclosed rather than engineered away. The rice-based drink row is LOOSER on inorganic arsenic (30 ug/kg, EU 2023/915 section 3.4.1.6) than the juice rows (20 ug/kg, and 10 ug/kg for apple-containing juice), because the EU assessed that exact commodity and set that exact number. And several formulated-beverage rows carry a lead ceiling of 200 ug/kg because Hong Kong Cap 132V is the only credible sovereign that regulates those forms at all, while the flavoured-water row carries 5 ug/kg because the packaged-drinking-water quality standards do reach a product that is water plus flavour.
Those spreads are applicability judgements, each recorded on the face of the cell, and only the endogenous Standards Ratchet in Governance Policy section 12 may lower any of them.
Master Limit Table
All values in ppb (µg/kg), as-consumed basis. 9 of 11 analytes carry a firm ceiling; the remaining 2 are toxic species bounded by their parent totals (species ≤ total, measured on every lot), so every analyte carries an enforceable ceiling. A brand meeting every value on a like-for-like basis qualifies for the mark.
| Analyte | Tier | HMTc limit | Binding basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lead (Pb) | Tier 1 | 200 | strictest government ML (Hong Kong) |
| Inorganic arsenic (iAs) | Tier 1 | bounded | ≤ total tAs, measured every lot (see note) |
| Total arsenic (tAs) | Tier 2 | 10 | government read-across (EU) |
| Mercury, total (tHg) | Tier 1 | 1 | government read-across (EU) |
| Methylmercury (MeHg) | Tier 1 | bounded | ≤ total tHg, measured every lot (see note) |
| Cadmium (Cd) | Tier 1 | 2 | government read-across (AU) |
| Hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) | Tier 2 | 10 | government read-across (US-CA) |
| Nickel (Ni) | Tier 2 | 20 | government read-across (EU) |
| Tin (Sn) | Tier 2 | 100000 | government read-across (EU) |
| Aluminium (Al) | Tier 2 | 200 | government read-across (EU) |
| Total chromium (Cr) | Tier 2 | 50 | government read-across (AU) |
Tier 1 (Pb, iAs, Hg, MeHg, Cd) are zero-tolerance toxics with no established safe threshold. Tier 2 (tAs, Cr-VI, Ni, Sn, Al, Cr) carry a 150% transitional allowance under the program’s Status A–E framework.
Derivation
The full derivation for Coffee, ready-to-drink. Each row lists every government maximum level in force worldwide, converted to the as-consumed basis; the HMTc limit is the strictest of them, and the last column names which sovereign law binds. A blank cell means that government sets no limit for this analyte in this product.
| Analyte | HMTc | Binds |
|---|---|---|
| Lead (Pb) | 200 | Hong Kong |
| Inorganic arsenic (iAs) | bounded&sup5; | species ≤ tAs |
| Total arsenic (tAs) | 10² | read-across |
| Mercury, total (tHg) | 1² | read-across |
| Methylmercury (MeHg) | bounded&sup5; | species ≤ tHg |
| Cadmium (Cd) | 2² | read-across |
| Hexavalent chromium (Cr-VI) | 10² | read-across |
| Nickel (Ni) | 20² | read-across |
| Tin (Sn) | 100000² | read-across |
| Aluminium (Al) | 200² | read-across |
| Total chromium (Cr) | 50² | read-across |
All values µg/kg (ppb), as-consumed basis. ² no government regulates this analyte for this exact product form: the value is a disclosed read-across from the nearest applicable government maximum, and the derivation names the instrument it comes from. It is never taken from occurrence data. After publication the standards ratchet may tighten it, using certified-lot results only. ³ not material in this matrix: measured but with no standalone number, controlled by packaging control or by the total-metal screen, not an invented value. &sup5; a toxic species governed by and bounded by its parent total (for example inorganic arsenic ≤ total arsenic): the species can never exceed the total, so the total ceiling is the species ceiling. The total metal is measured on every lot and the species is established at baseline; no separate species ceiling is published. On ongoing lots the species is speciated whenever the total exceeds its limit.
Risk Flag
On the published occurrence literature to date, Coffee, ready-to-drink shows no systematic gap between typical market levels and the limit: the limit being the strictest government maximum for the product (Method v2.0). Certification is decided on a product’s own tested result, not on a distribution; an individual lot or supplier can still exceed a limit.
See the cross-category summary of the ingredients that most often struggle.
Cite this standard
Pendergrass, K. “Coffee, ready-to-drink.” In Heavy Metal Tested & Certified (HMTc) Beverages standard, version 1.0. Institute of Contaminant Standards (ICS), 2026. DOI: registration pending.
The literature baseline for every analyte is maintained independently at the Heavy Metal Index. This certification standard applies those findings; the two are kept editorially separate by design.