Ingredient class — protein/collagen powders — HMTc Standard

How limits are set

No government sets a heavy-metal maximum level for a dietary supplement that protects a child. The adult frameworks that exist — sovereign food-supplement limits (lead 1000–10000 µg/kg), USP <2232> elemental-contaminant PDEs computed for an adult consumer, California Proposition 65 warning doses — are written for a 60–70 kg adult. HMTc instead holds every supplement, adult- or child-labelled, to the strictest sovereign infant-and-child-food maximum level for each analyte, because children routinely consume adult supplements (gummies, protein powders, greens, melatonin drops) and body-weight-normalised exposure makes the child the binding safety case.

Every value on this page is therefore a child-protective read-across, disclosed as such: the anchor is a real sovereign infant-food limit, named in the derivation below, applied to supplements as a voluntary over-compliance. The laxer adult floor is disclosed on every analyte and never selects the number. Where no government sets an infant-and-child-food limit for an analyte — total and hexavalent chromium, methylmercury — no number is invented: the analyte is placed under mandatory control with reflex speciation.

Master Limit Table

All values in ppb (µg/kg), as-sold 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.

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; above the limit, on any metal, it is not certified and carries no mark.

Derivation

No government regulates a dietary supplement to a child-safe heavy-metal level. Each HMTc limit for Ingredient class — protein/collagen powders is read across from the strictest sovereign infant-and-child-food maximum level for the analyte — the child anchor named below — and applied to all supplements as a voluntary over-compliance. The adult floor column discloses the laxer sovereign supplement limit, USP <2232> oral concentration, and California Prop 65 dose that HMTc declines to use. It is shown, and never selected.

Adult floor values in µg/kg unless marked. Supplement ML is the strictest–laxest sovereign food-supplement maximum on the register; USP <2232> is the oral permitted-daily-exposure concentration at a 10 g/day intake; Prop 65 is the California developmental safe-harbour dose. HMTc holds every supplement to the child anchor instead.

Occurrence and derivation rationale

For each analyte on the panel: what the peer-reviewed and survey literature measured in this category, cited one way to the Heavy Metal Index, and the Method v2.0 reasoning behind the certification limit — including, where no government sets a number, why the program sets one anyway. Occurrence figures are literature findings; the derivation is the certifier's.

Risk Flag

Where certification is demanding for this subcategory, and why. These carry a natural or process background that runs above the limit — the limit being the strictest government maximum for the product, never a percentile of market data (Method v2.0). A product is not disqualified by this — only its own tested result decides certification, and a well-sourced lot can sit well below the market.

Multipliers are the ratio of the pooled occurrence median to the published limit; occurrence characterises the market only and carries no compliance weight. See the cross-category summary.