Diapers and diaper components — HMTc Standard

How every number on this page is set

What this standard coversCovers the diaper and its structural components: nonwoven topsheet and backsheet, the absorbent core, elastics, adhesives, and closures/fasteners. It does NOT cover baby or diaper wipes, or diaper creams, which are leave-on skin-cleansing and skin-care products certified under Category 2 (Infant and Child Personal Care), rows Baby wipes and Diaper cream.

Diapers and diaper components is a contact product, not a food. Its heavy-metal limits are extractable-metal limits for the skin-contact textile and elastic components (EU REACH Annex XVII entry 72). Entry 72 excludes disposable textiles, so the limits bind reusable-cloth components directly and are read across as the benchmark for disposable-diaper skin-contact components; the absorbent core has no metal-migration pathway — not dietary maximum levels. The standard for each analyte is the strictest limit set by any credible government regulator for this product in its own basis: a lookup of sovereign law, with the measured quantity stated on every row. Where no instrument directly governs the exact product form — a pacifier is excluded from the Toy Safety Directive, a disposable diaper from the REACH textile restriction — the limit is read across from the nearest applicable sovereign limit and labelled as a read-across, never asserted as direct governance. Migration limits (what leaves the article into saliva or food) and total-content limits (how much metal the article contains) are different quantities measured by different methods; they are published as separate ceilings and never combined into one number. A certified product meets every applicable limit at once, each on a like-for-like basis.

Inorganic arsenic and methylmercury are not published for this category: they are ingestion-and-bioaccumulation speciation forms with no migration counterpart in a contact article, and the total-element ceilings (total arsenic, total mercury) bound them. Where a cell is marked not material, no regulator sets a limit and no exposure pathway exists; the determination is recorded, not left blank.

Master Limit Table

Limits in mg/kg, in the basis named on each row. “ND” means not detectable at the regulation’s stated detection limit — the strictest possible ceiling. Sub-rows (↳) are companion ceilings in a different basis that also apply. Tier 1 (Pb, Cd, iAs, Hg) are zero-tolerance toxics; Tier 2 (tAs, Ni, Al, Cr-VI, Sn) carry a transitional allowance under the program’s Status A–E framework. Antimony is regulated in the toy-migration instruments and screened, but is not one of the ten HMTc certification analytes.

Screened, not limited

All ten HMTc certification analytes, plus a total-chromium screen, are accounted for. The analytes below carry no published ceiling for this product because no exposure pathway and no government limit exist; each determination is recorded here rather than left as a silent gap. They are screened during certification, not certified against a number.

Derivation — every government value, side by side

Each row lists every government limit weighed for this analyte in the governing basis, converted to mg/kg; the HMTc limit is the strictest of them. Companion total-content ceilings appear in the Master Limit Table above, not here, because they are a different measured quantity.

Cite this standard