Overview
Direct measurements of heavy metals in baby wipes are scarce, and they are not on one analytical basis. A Washington State Department of Ecology laboratory table, first published in 2014, reports three wipe components at 40.6, 61.3, and 70.6 ppm antimony, with lead at 0.4, 0.8, and 1.4 ppm. Arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are printed as 0.0 in those three rows. Choi, Song, and Kim 2016 finds antimony as the frequent detect, in micrograms per liter of digest solution. A labeled reconstruction of that digest is on the source page. It is not the printed result. Nickel appears in two of those wet-wipe sheets, in the same solution units. A 2 April 2026 Chinese monitoring report read total antimony from an annex image in 20 of 21 online baby wipes, on a per-liter label, from 15.02 to 450.45 µg/L at the stable ends of the reads. One column was not detected. A 2025 Istanbul thesis measured ten coded baby wipes as squeezed liquid, digested fiber, and digested packaging, in ppb of the ICP-MS solution. Those three matrices are not pooled, and they are not milligrams per kilogram. Nothing opened for this page measures how much of any of those metals crosses infant skin.
The full account, including toxicology and the limits of an exposure calculation, is Heavy metals in baby wipes. Contaminants beyond the metal panel, among them preservatives, fragrance allergens, phthalates, PFAS, and microfibers, are reviewed in the companion Contaminants in baby wipes beyond the metal panel. A polyester polymerization catalyst is a supported explanation for antimony in polyester fiber. It is not, on the Choi table, a rule for wet-wipe sheets: the highest antimony result is labeled rayon. This page reports those measurements and the instruments that were opened. It does not rank products now on the shelf, and it does not set a certification limit.
Who this page is for
Regulators, journalists, and quality teams checking a claim about metals in baby wipes need the laboratory rows, the units, and the limits that were actually opened. A parent reading for a number should treat a concentration in a wipe as a concentration in a wipe. It is not a dose. The metal table includes what an internal compilation file holds, so a reader can see whether that file matches the opened law. Those cells are not measurements, and this page does not set a limit from them.
Evidence summary
Evidence summary
One row per metal. The eight are lead, arsenic, mercury, cadmium, chromium, nickel, tin, and aluminum. Antimony is the ninth because it is the metal the wipe measurements find. “No data found” means the documents opened for this page, and a further search for tin and aluminum in wipes, did not produce a figure. It does not mean the metal is absent. The last column is the internal file data/workbench/standards/cat2-compiled/baby-wipes.json. It is not a measurement and it is not a statute. Detail for each row is in the sections below.
| Metal | Measured in wipes | Adjacent products | Pathway | Limits opened | Internal file |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lead | Washington Ecology, three components, ICP-MS after XRF screening: 0.4, 0.8, and 1.4 ppm. Choi 2016, sheet digest, ICP-MS: six detects, 7.23 to 55.67 µg/L in solution. Not converted to mg/kg. Göçer 2025, instrument ppb: fiber 3.11 (F) and 0.29 (J); packaging 3.20 (H) and 3.16 (J); section 4.1 gives solution 3.10. A later sentence reprints 3.10 as packaging. | Diaper extracts in Nyamukamba 2023 report lead below the Oeko-Tex figure the authors used. Not a wipe. One Washington wipe package: 30.8 ppm lead. Packaging is not the wipe. | Hypothesis: pigment, filler, or package. No opened study shows the package metal moved into the wipe. | Washington RCW 70A.560.020: 1 ppm in a cosmetic product, including lead at 1 ppm or above. The statute does not name wipes. Korea Article 6(2): 20 µg/g for products other than clay powders. Health Canada guidance: 10 ppm. BVL 2017: 2.0 mg/kg general cosmetics, an orientation value. | 1,000 µg/kg, labeled Washington. The number matches 1 ppm. The cited wiki page for that statute does not exist. The file’s substantiation still calls the German 2.0 mg/kg value the strictest. The file binds the liquid only. The statute binds the cosmetic product. |
| Arsenic | Total arsenic. Washington prints 0.0 in all three components. Choi: 47.14 to 71.75 µg/L in the three United States sheets only. Göçer, instrument ppb: solution 11.80 (A), packaging 1.01 (C), fiber 0.34 (D). Inorganic arsenic: no data found. None of these studies speciated. | Nyamukamba reports total arsenic in diaper extracts. Not inorganic arsenic. Not a wipe. | No wipe-specific pathway was opened. | BVL 2017: 0.5 mg/kg general cosmetics, the element, an orientation value. Health Canada: 3 ppm, guidance. Korea Article 6(2): 10 µg/g, not speciated. EU Annex II prohibits arsenic as an ingredient and sets no ppm. No inorganic-arsenic number for a wipe was opened. | Total arsenic: 500 µg/kg, labeled BVL 2017. The number matches the general line. Orientation value. Wipes were not in that monitoring set. Inorganic arsenic: null, labeled control. That null matches the absence of a cosmetic inorganic-arsenic limit in the instruments opened. |
| Mercury | Total mercury. Washington prints 0.0 (cold-vapor atomic absorption). Choi detected none (mercury analyzer). Göçer, instrument ppb: solution 2.90 (C); fiber 0.63 (A) and 0.67 (B). Table 8 prints 2 ppb for solution D and is not used. Methylmercury: no data found. | No data found in the diaper, nonwoven, polyester, or lotion documents opened here. Nyamukamba did not measure mercury. | No wipe-specific pathway was opened. | BVL 2017: 0.1 mg/kg, orientation value. FDA 21 CFR 700.13: under 1 ppm if the trace is unavoidable, eye-area exception 65 ppm. Health Canada: 1 ppm, guidance. Korea Article 6(2): 1 µg/g. No methylmercury number was opened. | Total mercury: 100 µg/kg, labeled BVL 2017. The number matches 0.1 mg/kg. Orientation value, tighter than the 1 ppm cluster. Methylmercury: null, labeled not material. No wipe measurement speaks to that label. |
| Cadmium | Washington prints 0.0. Choi detected none. Göçer, instrument ppb: solution 0.20, 0.20, and 0.30 (A, B, C); packaging maximum 0.13 (E); fiber 0.08 (D), below the thesis quantification limit of 0.11. | Nyamukamba reports extractable cadmium in diapers below the authors’ Oeko-Tex comparison. Not a wipe. | No wipe-specific pathway was opened. | BVL 2017: 0.1 mg/kg general cosmetics and toothpaste, orientation value. Health Canada: 3 ppm, guidance. Korea Article 6(2): 5 µg/g. EU Annex II prohibits cadmium as an ingredient and sets no ppm. | 100 µg/kg, labeled BVL 2017. The number matches 0.1 mg/kg. Orientation value. Wipes were not in the monitoring set. |
| Chromium | Total chromium. Washington: 0.6, 0.5, and 0.6 ppm. The report says hexavalent chromium analysis was outside the study. Hexavalent chromium: no data found. Choi has no chromium column. | Nyamukamba, diapers, total chromium: sweat extracts 0.013 to 0.119 mg/kg. Not hexavalent. Not a wipe. | No wipe-specific pathway was opened. | No finished-cosmetic total-chromium content limit was opened. EU Annex II prohibits chromium and its salts as ingredients and sets no ppm. OEKO-TEX class I extractable chromium 1.0 mg/kg and chromium (VI) 0.5 mg/kg. Private standard. Korea’s impurity list does not include chromium. | Total chromium: null, labeled control. Hexavalent chromium: null, labeled control. The nulls match the absence of a content limit in the instruments opened. The file cites a tattooing restriction that was not re-opened here. |
| Nickel | Choi, two wet-wipe sheets: 261.26 and 1,242.63 µg/L. Twenty-two sheets not detected. Washington has no nickel column. Göçer, instrument ppb, conflicting maxima: fiber 28.46 (I) and 10.53 (B); solution 53.40 (G) and 20.20 with no code; packaging 3.60 (B). Not mg/kg. | Choi mask packs, not wipes: 103.52 and 53.69 µg/L, sheet plus liquid. Nyamukamba diapers: sweat 0.022 to 0.197 mg/kg; one urine extract 0.224 mg/kg. Below the opened class I extractable limit of 1.0 mg/kg. Above the 0.1 mg/kg figure the authors used. | Sensitization is why nickel matters. No opened paper shows nickel in a wipe caused diaper dermatitis. The opened wipe rashes are preservatives. | Korea Article 6(2): 10 µg/g for products other than eye makeup (35) and color makeup (30), if not intentionally added. Wet wipes are named in that article. Health Canada does not list nickel. REACH entry 27 is a release rule for jewelry and garment hardware, not a wipe content limit. EU Annex II prohibits elemental nickel as an ingredient and sets no ppm. OEKO-TEX class I extractable nickel: 1.0 mg/kg, private. | 10,000 µg/kg, labeled Korea, non-color tier. The number matches 10 µg/g if a wipe is a cosmetic and is not eye or color makeup. The allowance is conditional. The file binds the liquid only. The Korean article does not. |
| Tin | No data found. Not in the Washington panel. Not in the Choi panel. No organotin result in a wipe was found. | Šmajgl and Obhođaš 2015, diapers, EDXRF, publisher abstract: top sheet under 1.5 to 23.1 mg/kg total tin; tape under 1.5 to 22.4 mg/kg. The authors say it may be an organotin catalyst or PVC stabilizer. The method does not speciate. Not a wipe. | Hypothesis. Organotins are used as PVC stabilizers and as some polyester and polyurethane catalysts. No opened wipe study measured that residue. A PVC-free claim for wipes was not opened, and it would not by itself settle the question. | REACH Annex XVII entry 20: tributyltin in articles, dibutyltin in mixtures and articles for the public, and dioctyltin in named articles including childcare articles, nappies, and female hygiene products, each above 0.1 percent by weight of tin. A baby wipe is not named. This is a species rule, not a trace-level total-tin limit. Korea, Health Canada, and BVL 2017 do not list tin. OEKO-TEX Annex 6, optional, lists organic tin at 0.5 mg/kg for class I. Not law. | Null, labeled control. The null matches the absence of a total-tin cosmetic content limit. The file does not publish the 0.1 percent species rule as a total-tin ceiling. |
| Aluminum | No data found. Not in either wipe panel. No wipe-lotion aluminum concentration was found. | No data found in the diaper, nonwoven, polyester, or lotion measurements opened for this question. | Hypothesis only. A 2022 manufacturing paper on polyester/viscose baby wipes (DOI 10.1177/15280837211046619) describes the lotion as water, surfactant, phenoxyethanol, and EDTA, and it cites pH buffers as a class. It names no aluminum salt and reports no metal. Papermaking alum and aluminum packaging were not measured in a wipe opened here. | No aluminum impurity limit was found in Korea Article 6(2), the Health Canada impurity list, BVL 2017 Table 1, or the OEKO-TEX extractable list in the annex file opened. | Null, labeled control. The null matches the absence of an impurity limit in the instruments opened. The file’s reason, that aluminum is an intentional cosmetic ingredient across the category, was not established for baby wipes. |
| Antimony | Washington: 40.6, 61.3, and 70.6 ppm in three components. Choi: detected in 12 of 24 wet-wipe sheets; highest is the rayon-only sheet, 19,558.35 µg/L in the digest. A labeled reconstruction of that sheet is 2,444.79 mg/kg if the volume is taken as 25 mL. It is not the printed result. Chinese annex, 2026: 20 of 21 columns, 15.02 to 450.45 µg/L at the stable ends, one not detected. Göçer, instrument ppb: solution 695.40 (I); fiber 565.46 (D) and 537.86 (J), and also 476.69 (I). Above the stated 50 ppb calibration. Packaging 0.03 and 0.04, at or below the quantification limit. Not mg/kg. | Biver, Turner, and Filella 2021 measured polyester textiles, not wipes. Total antimony about 125 to 470 µg/g. Default artificial sweat mobilized about 0.05 to 2 percent. One Washington moist-wipes package: 95.8 ppm. | Evidence for polyester catalyst chemistry. Hypothesis for these wipes: the highest Choi result is labeled rayon, and several polyester-labeled sheets had none detected. Washington does not name the fiber. | Health Canada guidance: 5 ppm. Korea Article 6(2): 10 µg/g, in the article that names wet wipes. BVL 2017: 0.5 mg/kg, orientation value. OEKO-TEX class I extractable: 30 mg/kg, private, different test. EU Annex II prohibits antimony as an ingredient and sets no ppm. Washington ppm is not scored against those figures. The prep is undescribed, and Choi is in micrograms per liter. | No antimony cell. The file does not hold a number for the metal the wipe measurements find. |
Source Evidence Inventory
Stone, Washington State Department of Ecology Publication 14-04-014 is the government table. The agency’s publication record dates the report to March 2014. The PDF cover reads “Revised June 2021”; that revision updated contact information. Laboratory work was inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry for nine metals and cold-vapor atomic absorption for mercury, after X-ray fluorescence screening. One hundred fifty components went to the laboratory. The three wipe components, in ppm, are the following. Product words are the report’s own labels, so a reader can find the row. They are not a ranking of wipes now for sale.
| Report row | Sb | As | Cd | Cr | Co | Pb | Hg | Mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mom to mom supreme unscented wipes, SF002-c01 | 70.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.6 | 0.2 | 0.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Toddler wipes, TR002-c01 | 61.3 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.0 | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
| Travel baby wipes, TR014-c01 | 40.6 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.6 | 1.4 | 1.4 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
The laboratory panel has no nickel, tin, or aluminum column. Chromium in that table is total chromium. The report says hexavalent chromium was outside the study. The report does not print EPA 3052. The four 2012 plans it cites do, with reporting limits of 1.0 ppm for antimony, arsenic, cadmium, and lead, and 0.1 ppm for mercury on the ICP-MS row of the plan table. Lead at 0.4 and 0.8 ppm and chromium at 0.5 and 0.6 ppm sit below that 1.0 ppm plan limit. They are left as printed. Packaging was analyzed separately. Moist wipes packaging WM044-p01 was 95.8 ppm antimony. Soothing breast wipes packaging WM026-p01 was 38.0 ppm antimony and 30.8 ppm lead. Packaging metal is not evidence that the metal moved into the sheet or the liquid. The PDF is https://apps.ecology.wa.gov/publications/documents/1404014.pdf.
Choi, Song, and Kim, Journal of the Korean Oil Chemists’ Society 33 (2016) 195, DOI 10.12925/jkocs.2016.33.1.195, bought wet-wipe nonwovens in Korea and the United States and digested the sheet (about 0.2 g, nitric acid and hydrofluoric acid, microwave digestion) for ICP-MS. Mercury was a separate direct analysis. Table 5 is 24 wet wipes. Table 6 is eight mask packs, which are not baby wipes. Units are micrograms per liter of the measured solution. A dash is not detected. Nickel’s solution limits are a detection limit of 0.11 µg/L and a quantification limit of 0.33 µg/L.
Antimony was detected in 7 of 12 rayon-plus-polyester sheets, 2 of 5 rayon-plus-PET sheets, the rayon-plus-polyester-plus-cotton sheet, the rayon-only sheet, and one United States sheet labeled cloth-like. It was not detected in the pulp-plus-polypropylene sheet, the cotton sheet, or one United States sheet of unknown fiber. The highest antimony result is the rayon-only infant sheet, code ML, at 19,558.35 ± 3,537.3 µg/L. Lead was detected in six wet wipes. Cadmium, mercury, and thallium were not detected in any wet wipe. Arsenic was detected only in the three United States products (47.14 to 71.75 µg/L).
The methods say the digest was transferred and diluted with 25 mL of water. They do not say the solution was made up to 25 mL. If the final volume is taken as 25.0 mL and the mass as 0.200 g, a solution concentration in µg/L is multiplied by 0.125. Code ML, the rayon-only infant sheet, is 19,558.35 × 0.125 = 2,444.79 mg/kg. If 25 mL of water was added to 8 mL of acid, the factor is 0.165 and the same sheet is 3,227.13 mg/kg. The mass is the word “approximately,” not a weight for each code. Neither factor is a result in the paper. The per-fiber table is on Determination of heavy metals on the non-woven in wet wipes using ICP-MS. Mercury was a direct analyzer measurement, so the factor does not apply to it.
The 2 April 2026 Chinese monitoring report is a separate source page. Twenty-one online baby wipes. The annex image, not the text layer, holds the sample numbers. Total antimony on a per-liter label was read in 20 columns. The stable ends are 15.02 and 450.45 µg/L. Sample N was not detected. The narrative attributes that non-detect to one named product. The name is not repeated here. It is not a fiber measurement and it is not a ranking. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury read as not detected on a unit that was not adopted. The preparation behind the per-liter antimony number is not described.
Göçer 2025 measured ten baby wipes bought in Turkey, coded A through J. The liquid was squeezed by hand and was not digested. Fiber and packaging were dried, about 0.2 g was digested in 65 percent nitric acid, and 10 mL of water was added. The acid volume is not stated. Results the thesis discusses are ppb in the ICP-MS solution. Solution antimony, code I, is 695.40 ppb. Fiber antimony is 565.46 ppb (D) and 537.86 ppb (J), and section 4.1 also prints 476.69 ppb (I). Those antimony figures sit above the stated calibration top of 50 ppb. Nickel, lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are printed separately for solution, fiber, and packaging, and several maxima conflict. The conflicts, the limits, and the decision not to convert to milligrams per kilogram are on the source page. Brands are not named. The thesis’s drinking-water comparisons are not adopted.
Nyamukamba and colleagues, 2023 measured 20 disposable diapers bought in Cape Town, extracted in artificial sweat and in a laboratory urine. It is pathway context for skin contact. It is not a wipe study. The full text confirms the results-section ranges. One methods sentence says ICP-MS and the instrument sentence names an ICP-OES. Sweat-extract ranges in the results text include nickel 0.022 to 0.197 mg/kg. One urine extract reached 0.224 mg/kg nickel. The authors say nickel was the only metal above the Oeko-Tex limit they used, which they state as 0.1 mg/kg. The 2025 Oeko-Tex class I extractable nickel limit opened for this page is 1.0 mg/kg. Both reported nickel ranges are below 1.0 mg/kg.
Supporting evidence and scope
Nyamukamba 2023 is broader than this row on purpose: the samples are disposable diapers, extracted rather than digested. Nickel and total chromium are the metals used from it here. It is labeled pathway context. It is not evidence of either metal in a wipe.
Šmajgl 2015 is also pathway context. The samples are diaper top sheets and adhesive tape, measured for total tin. It is not evidence of tin in a wipe.
Choi’s mask-pack table is a different product, reported in the same paper as the wet wipes. Those nickel and antimony figures are not baby-wipe results.
Biver, Turner, and Filella 2021 measured antimony in polyester textiles meant for skin contact, not in baby wipes. Total antimony was about 125 to 470 µg/g. Default artificial sweat mobilized about 0.05 to 2 percent of that antimony. The transfer fraction is not applied to wipes. The catalyst account stays a hypothesis for wipes.
Shin, Yoon, Park, and Ahn 2004 measured metals in eleven disposable infant diapers, not wipes. The PDF is a scan. Table 1 total-digest antimony, where the results prose and the table agree, runs from not detected to 15.394 ppm, with the highest single result in one Japanese diaper and the United States diapers as a high group (6.427, 6.470, and 11.942 ppm). Arsenic and mercury were not detected. Lead was 0.089 ppm in one Korean diaper and not detected in the others. Timed artificial-urine tables were not transcribed.
Federal/Regulatory Limits vs Field Findings
A baby wipe is not one legal object. A wipe sold to clean skin fits the cosmetic definitions opened below. A voluntary textile label is not a statute. Field numbers are cited only where the basis is the same kind of measurement. Choi’s micrograms per liter are not placed next to a milligrams-per-kilogram limit as if they were the same unit.
| Instrument | Opened text | What it does, and does not, do for a baby wipe |
|---|---|---|
| Washington RCW 70A.560.020, in force 1 January 2025. https://app.leg.wa.gov/RCW/default.aspx?cite=70A.560.020 | A cosmetic product may not contain intentionally added lead, or lead at 1 ppm or above. “Cosmetic” is defined by RCW 69.04.011 as an article applied to the body for cleansing, except soap. | The 1 ppm line is a lead limit for a cosmetic product. The statute does not name wipes. It does not set cadmium, arsenic, mercury, antimony, or nickel limits. The three Washington wipe rows are 0.4 to 1.4 ppm lead, but the report does not say the result is the whole cosmetic article, and it predates the statute. |
| Health Canada cosmetic impurity guidance, section 4 | Technically avoidable above lead 10 ppm, arsenic 3 ppm, cadmium 3 ppm, mercury 1 ppm, and antimony 5 ppm. Nickel is not listed. Guidance, not a regulation. The capture opened is the Internet Archive copy of 10 January 2025. | Applies if the product is a cosmetic. It does not name baby wipes. The antimony figure is the government antimony number opened that could be argued for a cosmetic. It is not a score against an extractable textile test. |
| Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009 | Annex II prohibits, as ingredients, antimony (entry 40), arsenic (43), cadmium (68), chromium and chromic acid and its salts (97), mercury except special cases in Annex V (221), lead (289), and elemental nickel (1093), plus many nickel compounds. Article 17 allows a technically unavoidable trace and sets no ppm. | No numeric trace limit. A concentration from a laboratory is not, by itself, a violation or a clearance. |
| Germany, BVL 2017, DOI 10.1007/s00003-016-1044-2, Table 1 | Orientation values for technically avoidable content: lead 2.0 mg/kg in cosmetic products in general (5 mg/kg for named decorative and theater make-up; 0.5 mg/kg in toothpaste); cadmium 0.1 mg/kg; mercury 0.1 mg/kg; arsenic 0.5 mg/kg (2.5 mg/kg for theater, fan, or carnival make-up); antimony 0.5 mg/kg. No nickel line. | These are orientation values, not a statutory maximum. The monitoring set was decorative cosmetics, baby powder, and toothpaste. Wipes were not in it. The “cosmetic products in general” line is what a reader would have to argue from. |
| Korea cosmetic safety standard | Lead 20 µg/g for products other than clay powders (50 µg/g); nickel 10 µg/g for products other than eye makeup (35) and color makeup (30); arsenic 10 µg/g; mercury 1 µg/g; antimony 10 µg/g; cadmium 5 µg/g. Wet wipes are named in the same article for methanol, formaldehyde, and microbes. | If a wet wipe is a cosmetic and is not eye or color makeup, the opened association reproduction puts nickel at 10 µg/g. The 2025-63 gazette PDF was not re-opened. Choi’s solution concentrations are not in these units. |
| U.S. FDA | December 2016 draft guidance recommends 10 ppm lead as an impurity in lip products and externally applied cosmetics. The page says “Not for implementation.” 21 CFR 700.13 treats a cosmetic as adulterated if it contains mercury, unless the mercury is an unavoidable trace under 1 ppm, with an eye-area exception at 65 ppm. | No antimony number. No wipe-specific lead number in force. The mercury rule is binding if the product is a cosmetic. |
| OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100, Annex 4, edition 02.2025 | Class I extractable limits include nickel 1.0 mg/kg, antimony 30.0 mg/kg, lead 0.2 mg/kg, cadmium 0.1 mg/kg, and mercury 0.02 mg/kg. Wet-wipes pH is 3.5 to 7.5. | Private standard. Extractable and total are different tests. Nyamukamba’s diaper nickel results are below 1.0 mg/kg. They are not wipe results. |
| China GB/T 27728.2-2024 | Intertek’s summary lists lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury as test items for infant wet wipes. Nickel and antimony are not in that list. No ppm figure was in the summary. The standard PDF was not obtained. | No numeric limit is cited from this instrument. |
| EU REACH Annex XVII entry 27 | Nickel release from piercing posts and from articles such as jewelry and garment metal hardware. | Not a wipe content limit. The examples are metal articles in prolonged skin contact. |
| EU REACH Annex XVII entry 20, legislation.gov.uk reproduction | Organotin species above 0.1 percent by weight of tin: tributyltin in articles; dibutyltin in mixtures and articles for the public; dioctyltin in named articles, including childcare articles, nappies, and female hygiene products. | A baby wipe is not named. No tin measurement in a wipe was found to compare with 0.1 percent. The entry is not a total-tin impurity limit. |
| Chromium, tin, aluminum | No finished-cosmetic content limit for total chromium, hexavalent chromium, total tin, or aluminum was opened in the Korea impurity list, the Health Canada impurity list, or BVL 2017 Table 1. | Empty regulatory cells stay empty. OEKO-TEX extractable chromium and optional Annex 6 organotin figures are private tests, not these statutes. |
Controls and mitigation
The opened evidence does not support a ranked list of formulation changes with measured effect sizes for wipes. Three observations are concrete enough to act on in a laboratory, and each one is a test design rather than a claimed reduction.
Test the sheet and the liquid separately, and report both. Choi did that for one mask pack and found almost all of the antimony in the sheet. The wet-wipe samples were digested as sheets. Until a wet-wipe study publishes both fractions, a single number on “the wipe” cannot be assigned to the water, the preservative system, or the fiber.
Do not treat a polyester label as proof that antimony is present, or that a non-polyester label means it is absent. In Choi, the highest antimony result is the rayon-only sheet, and several polyester-labeled sheets had none detected. Fiber identity is still the right variable to record, because the catalyst chemistry is real in polyester. It is not a result by itself.
Test the package on its own row. The Washington packaging table found 95.8 ppm antimony in one moist-wipes package and 30.8 ppm lead in one breast-wipes package. Those rows are not the wipes.
For nickel, a total digest in micrograms per liter is not a sensitization test. No opened wipe study uses a sweat extraction and then a clinical reading. A laboratory that wants to speak to allergic contact dermatitis has to say which of those steps it did.
Antimony and polyester
Polyethylene terephthalate is usually made with an antimony catalyst. Textile experiments on polyester clothing and household fabric, not on baby wipes, find antimony in the fiber and find that only a small share of it moves into artificial sweat under standard tests. Choi’s discussion makes the same catalyst link for the wet-wipe sheets. The table does not make the link a rule. The highest antimony result is labeled rayon, and several polyester-labeled sheets had no detected antimony. The Washington report does not identify the fiber in the three wipe components. The catalyst account is a hypothesis worth testing on polyester sheets. It is not, by itself, a finding about wipes now for sale.
Pigments and packaging are separate hypotheses. The Washington packaging rows show that a wipe package can contain tens of ppm of antimony, and in one breast-wipe package about 31 ppm of lead. That justifies testing the package when a wipe is tested. It does not show that the package contaminated the wipe. Choi measured the sheet. For one mask pack, almost all of the antimony was in the sheet rather than the liquid. The authors did not publish that split for the wet wipes.
Nickel
Nickel is a separate problem from systemic toxicity. On diaper-area skin the question is allergic contact dermatitis: whether nickel on occluded or broken skin can sensitize a child, or elicit a rash in a child who is already sensitized. None of the documents cited here measure nickel moving from a wipe into skin.
In Choi Table 5, nickel was detected in two wet-wipe sheets. Code MO, an infant wipe labeled rayon plus polyester plus cotton, was 261.26 ± 5.14 µg/L. Code PA, bought in the United States and labeled cloth-like, was 1,242.63 ± 43.71 µg/L. The other 22 wet-wipe sheets, including the rayon-only sheet, were not detected. Table 6 is mask packs. Combined sheet-plus-liquid nickel was 103.52 ± 2.02 µg/L in code GA and 53.69 ± 1.45 µg/L in code IT. Those mask-pack figures are micrograms per liter. They are not milligrams per liter, and they are not baby wipes. The same unadopted conversion discussed above would be required before comparing any of these solution numbers with a microgram-per-gram limit. It is not made here.
The Washington panel did not include nickel. Göçer 2025 does report nickel in the squeezed liquid, in ppb, not in milligrams per kilogram. The thesis prints 53.40 ppb for solution code G and, in section 4.1, 20.20 ppb with no code. Fiber nickel is printed as 28.46 ppb (code I) and as 10.53 ppb (code B), each sentence calling its own figure the highest. Packaging nickel, code B, is 3.60 ppb. The two fiber figures and the two solution figures are both kept. Neither is a content result in the dry sheet.
Nickel limits that were opened
Korea’s cosmetic safety standard, as reproduced by the Korea Cosmetic Industry Association (https://kcia.or.kr/cid/cs/law.php, opened 25 September 2026), sets nickel at 35 µg/g or below for eye makeup, 30 µg/g or below for color makeup, and 10 µg/g or below for other products. The allowance applies when the substance was not intentionally added and complete technical removal is impossible. The same article sets separate methanol, formaldehyde, and microbial limits for wet wipes (물휴지), so wet wipes are inside the instrument. Nickel has no wet-wipe-only number. A wet wipe that is not eye makeup or color makeup falls in the 10 µg/g tier on that text. The gazette PDF of MFDS Notice No. 2025-63 was not re-opened for this page. The association text matches the limits transcribed at Korea MFDS Notice No. 2025-63 - cosmetic metal limits.
Health Canada’s guidance on heavy-metal impurities in cosmetics does not list nickel. The opened archive capture of 10 January 2025 defines the metals in that guidance as lead, arsenic, cadmium, antimony, and mercury, and section 4 sets impurity figures only for those five.
EU REACH Annex XVII entry 27, opened at https://reachonline.eu/reach/en/annex-xvii.html, restricts nickel release from piercing post assemblies (0.2 µg/cm²/week) and from articles intended to come into direct and prolonged contact with the skin, with examples that are jewelry, watches, and metal hardware on garments (0.5 µg/cm²/week). A pre-moistened wipe is not one of those articles. The entry is not a content limit for a wipe.
Regulation (EC) No 1223/2009, Annex II, prohibits elemental nickel (entry 1093, CAS 7440-02-0) and a long list of nickel compounds as cosmetic ingredients. Article 17 allows a technically unavoidable trace and sets no ppm.
OEKO-TEX STANDARD 100, Annex 4, edition 02.2025, lists extractable nickel for product class I (baby) at 1.0 mg/kg. That is a private certification test on an extract, not a statute, and not a score for a total digest. The annex also sets a wet-wipes pH range of 3.5 to 7.5. The PDF is https://www.oeko-tex.com/importedmedia/downloadfiles/OEKO-TEX_STANDARD_100_Limit_Values_and_Individual_Substances_According_to_Appendices_4_5_EN_DE.pdf.
An Intertek summary of China’s GB/T 27728.2-2024, the recommended standard for wet wipes for children 6 and under, lists lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury as heavy-metal test items for infant wipes. Nickel is not in that list. The standard PDF was not obtained, so no Chinese nickel number is cited. https://www.intertek.com.cn/listdata/1943503268759998464.html
Sensitization, as context, and wipe rashes, as evidence about preservatives
A 2025 meta-analysis in Contact Dermatitis (DOI 10.1111/cod.14753) pooled positive patch tests in children under 18 who were patch tested between 2010 and 2024. Nickel sulphate was the most frequent allergen, at 11.9 percent (95 percent confidence interval 8.6 to 15.71 percent) across 16 studies. The United States figure in that paper is 18.0 percent (14.6 to 21.9), and the European figure is 10.2 percent (5.4 to 16.2). Among children with atopic dermatitis the pooled nickel figure was 12.6 percent (7.8 to 18.4). These are children sent for patch testing, not all children. The paper discusses jewelry and clothing fasteners. It does not study wipes. That prevalence is context.
Wipes can cause allergic contact dermatitis. The opened reports are about preservatives. Chang and colleagues, Pediatrics 2014, DOI 10.1542/peds.2013-1453, describe six children with perianal, buttock, or facial dermatitis, positive patch tests to methylchloroisothiazolinone/methylisothiazolinone, and use of wet wipes containing methylisothiazolinone. The rash cleared after the wipes were stopped. Warshaw and colleagues, Dermatitis, DOI 10.1097/der.0000000000000248, report that 79 of 9,037 patients patch tested by the North American Contact Dermatitis Group from 2011 to 2014 had a positive reaction tied to a wet-wipe source. The abstract’s leading allergens are methylisothiazolinone, the methylchloroisothiazolinone combination, bronopol, iodopropynyl butylcarbamate, and fragrance. Nickel is not among them. No paper cited here shows that nickel in a baby wipe caused diaper dermatitis.
Tin
No tin measurement in a baby wipe was found. Washington’s panel and Choi’s panel do not include tin. A search for organotin in nonwovens and for a PVC-free wipe claim did not return a concentration in a wipe.
The nearest opened measurement is in diapers. Šmajgl and Obhođaš, X-Ray Spectrometry, 2015, DOI 10.1002/xrs.2609, used americium-excited energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence. The publisher abstract reports total tin in the top sheet from under 1.5 to 23.1 mg/kg and in the adhesive tape from under 1.5 to 22.4 mg/kg, with tin in four of five tape systems and two of six top sheets. The authors say the tin may be an organotin used as a catalyst or as a PVC heat stabilizer. The method reports total tin. It does not speciate. The PDF was not in this checkout, so the brand-by-brand table is not copied here. The study is not a wipe study.
REACH Annex XVII entry 20, opened on the legislation.gov.uk reproduction of the annex, restricts organotin species at 0.1 percent by weight of tin. Tri-substituted compounds such as tributyltin are restricted in articles. Dibutyltin compounds are restricted in mixtures and articles supplied to the general public. Dioctyltin compounds are restricted in a named list that includes textile articles intended to contact the skin, childcare articles, female hygiene products, and nappies. A baby wipe is not in that list. The rule is not a trace-level total-tin limit of the kind used for lead in a cosmetic. OEKO-TEX Annex 6, edition line 04.02.2025, lists organic tin compounds at 0.5 mg/kg for product class I. That annex is an optional catalogue, used when an applicant asks for it. It is not the standard Annex 4 list, and it is not law.
The pathway into a wipe is a hypothesis: catalyst residue or a stabilizer in a polymer. Nothing opened here measured it.
Aluminum
No aluminum measurement in a baby wipe, a wipe nonwoven, a diaper extract, a polyester textile, or a baby-wipe lotion was found. Infant-formula aluminum papers are a different product and are not used on this page.
A 2022 paper on the manufacture of polyester/viscose baby wipes, DOI 10.1177/15280837211046619, describes the lotion as purified water, a surfactant, phenoxyethanol, and EDTA. It cites a recommendation that baby wipes contain pH buffers. It does not name an aluminum salt, an aluminum preservative, or papermaking alum, and it reports no metal concentration. Aluminum packaging was not in the Washington panel. The preservative pathway and the pulp-processing pathway are hypotheses with no number attached.
No aluminum impurity limit was found in the Korea cosmetic article, the Health Canada impurity list, the 2017 German orientation table, or the OEKO-TEX extractable-metal list in the annex file opened for this page.
How standards math uses this page
This page is a literature record. It does not compute a certification limit, and a source’s concentration is not a pass-fail line. Descriptive numbers stay in the units the source printed. Where a government instrument sets a number, that number is cited above with its legal character: a statute, a guidance impurity figure, or an orientation value. Where no instrument opened for this page sets a number for a metal in a wipe, the cell is left as a gap. A gap is not filled by borrowing a textile extractable limit, a diaper ecolabel, or a digest concentration in micrograms per liter.
Historical recalls and enforcement
No recall notice or enforcement case about metals in baby wipes was opened for this page. Washington, Oregon, and Vermont manufacturer reports in the personal-wipes category, pulled from the High Priority Chemicals Data System, contained parabens and diethyl phthalate, not metals. California’s Proposition 65 60-day-notice search did not return a usable result set in the page source. That search is incomplete. It is not a finding that no notice exists.
What is not known
No opened study measures dermal absorption of any of these metals from a baby wipe. Tin in a wipe: no data found. Aluminum in a wipe: no data found. Inorganic arsenic, methylmercury, and hexavalent chromium: no data found. The lotion fraction of a wet wipe has not been reported for metals in the Choi wet-wipe series. The 2025 Istanbul thesis reports the squeezed liquid in instrument ppb and does not report milligrams per kilogram. China’s GB/T 27728.2-2024 PDF was not obtained. The Šmajgl diaper-tin PDF was not in this checkout; the publisher abstract was used. The Washington report does not identify fiber and does not print the digestion on the wipe row. The 2012 plans specify the method and a 1.0 ppm reporting limit. The 2026 Chinese per-liter antimony preparation is not described. Market detection rates cannot be calculated from a screened laboratory list.
Choi, Song, and Kim 2016 is a source record. The solution concentrations, and the labeled reconstruction, are in data/evidence/choi2016-wet-wipes-solution-ug-per-l.csv. The reconstruction is not the printed result.
Methodology
Speciation is kept as the source reported it. Chromium in the Washington table is total chromium. Arsenic in that table and in the German orientation values below is the element, not inorganic arsenic. Mercury is total mercury unless a rule says otherwise. Methylmercury and hexavalent chromium were not speciated in the wipe rows.
Basis is kept as printed. Washington results are ppm in the component that went to the laboratory. The report body does not say whether that component was sheet, lotion, or both, and it does not print the digestion on the wipe row. The 2012 plans it cites specify EPA 3052 and EPA 6020, with a 1.0 ppm reporting limit for antimony, arsenic, cadmium, and lead. Printed values below that limit are left as printed. Choi results are micrograms per liter in the digest solution. The methods say the digest was diluted with 25 mL of water, not that it was made up to 25 mL. If the volume is taken as 25 mL and the mass as 0.200 g, the factor is 0.125. The rayon-only sheet, 19,558.35 µg/L, reconstructs to 2,444.79 mg/kg. That reconstruction is shown on the source page and is not used as the paper’s result. The 2026 Chinese antimony figures stay in the per-liter unit read from the annex. Oeko-Tex figures are extractable milligrams per kilogram. A total-content result is not scored against an extractable limit.
The Washington rows are not a random sample of wipes. Components were screened by X-ray fluorescence, and a component went to the contract laboratory if that screen found a metal of concern. A printed 0.0 is the value in the table. The plans’ 1.0 ppm reporting limit is not written onto those rows, so 0.0 is not restated here as less-than 1.0 ppm. Choi prints a dash for not detected, and it prints limits of detection for the solution.
Sources are not pooled. Three screened components, a 24-sheet digest study, a 21-product image annex, a ten-product thesis in instrument ppb, and diaper studies are different designs. No detection rate for the market is calculated from them.
References
Works cited in this page’s text, in first-appearance order. See Sources for this page’s source inventory. Each title links to a source record with bibliographic details, reported findings, and document provenance.
- Determination of heavy metals on the non-woven in wet wipes using ICP-MSPeer-reviewed
- Analysis report: quality monitoring results for baby wet wipes sold onlineAssociation report
- Evaluation of the liquid, fiber and packaging content of baby wet wipes for heavy metal contaminationThesis
- Metals in Children’s and Consumer Products and PackagingRegulation
- Determination of Selected Harmful Substances in Baby Diapers Available on the South African MarketPeer-reviewed
- Antimony release from polyester textiles by artificial sweat solutions: A call for a standardized procedurePeer-reviewed
- Hazardous substance analysis of disposable diaper for infantPeer-reviewed
Sources
This table lists source records that measure metals in wipes, or that are labeled pathway context. Other files whose routing frontmatter names this category are not measurements of wipes. Those records are not deleted.
| # | Citation | Year | Type | Used on this page for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Safety 2026. Analysis report: quality monitoring results for baby wet wipes sold online, 中国消费品质量安全促进会, 分析报告, 2 April 2026 | 2026 | Association report | Measurement. Twenty-one online baby wipes, China, April 2026. Annex image: total antimony on a per-liter label in 20 of 21 columns, preferred reads 15.02 to 450.45 µg/L. One column not detected. Lead, cadmium, arsenic, and mercury read as not detected on a unit that was not adopted. Not milligrams per kilogram. Not the Choi digest. |
| 2 | İA 2025. Evaluation of the liquid, fiber and packaging content of baby wet wipes for heavy metal contamination, MSc thesis, İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa, Adli Tıp ve Adli Bilimler Enstitüsü, Fen Bilimleri Anabilim Dalı. Supervisor Zeynep Türkmen. YÖK thesis catalog number 988276, as supplied with the file. That number is not printed on the cover or abstract pages of this PDF. | 2025 | Thesis | Measurement. Ten Turkish baby wipes, coded A–J. Squeezed liquid, digested fiber, and digested packaging reported separately, in ppb of the ICP-MS solution. Not milligrams per kilogram. Several maxima are printed twice and conflict. Antimony results above 50 ppb sit above the stated calibration. |
| 3 | Nyamukamba et al. 2023. Determination of Selected Harmful Substances in Baby Diapers Available on the South African Market, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health 20(2): 1023 | 2023 | Peer-reviewed | Pathway context, not a wipe measurement. Extractable metals in 20 disposable diapers. Nickel was the only metal the authors reported above the Oeko-Tex figure they used (0.1 mg/kg). Total chromium is also reported. Tin and aluminum are not in the panel. |
| 4 | Biver et al. 2021. Antimony release from polyester textiles by artificial sweat solutions: A call for a standardized procedure, Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology 119:104824 | 2021 | Peer-reviewed | Pathway context, not a wipe measurement. Polyester textiles. Total antimony about 125 to 470 µg/g. Default artificial sweat mobilized about 0.05 to 2 percent, or 0.1 to 1 µg/g in the abstract. Table 1 extractable results run up to 2.572 µg/g. |
| 5 | Stone 2021. Metals in Children’s and Consumer Products and Packaging, Washington State Department of Ecology, Hazardous Waste and Toxics Reduction Program, Publication 14-04-014 (Revised June 2021) | 2021 | Regulatory | Measurement. Washington Ecology ICP-MS of three wipe components and two wipe packages. Antimony, lead, and total chromium in ppm. The report does not print EPA 3052. The 2012 plans it cites do, with a 1.0 ppm reporting limit for those metals. Printed values below 1.0 ppm are not restated as less-than that limit. The panel has no nickel, tin, or aluminum column. Only components with a metal of concern on the XRF screen went to the laboratory. |
| 6 | Choi et al. 2016. Determination of heavy metals on the non-woven in wet wipes using ICP-MS, Journal of the Korean Oil Chemists’ Society 33(1):195-203 | 2016 | Peer-reviewed | Measurement. Twenty-four wet-wipe sheets digested for ICP-MS. Antimony, lead, arsenic, and nickel in micrograms per liter of digest solution. A labeled reconstruction multiplies by 0.125 if the volume is taken as 25 mL and the mass as 0.200 g. That reconstruction is not the printed result. Cadmium and mercury not detected. Mask packs in the same paper are not baby wipes. |
| 7 | Šmajgl et al. 2015. Occurrence of tin in disposable baby diapers, X-Ray Spectrometry | 2015 | Peer-reviewed | Pathway context, not a wipe measurement. Total tin by EDXRF in diaper top sheets and adhesive tape. The publisher abstract gives the ranges used on this page. The method does not speciate organotin. |
| 8 | Shin et al. 2004. Hazardous substance analysis of disposable diaper for infant, Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles 28(1):165-171 | 2004 | Peer-reviewed | Pathway context, not a wipe measurement. Scanned 2004 paper on eleven disposable diapers. Table 1 total-digest antimony is quoted only where the results prose and the table image agree. Timed urine-extract tables were not transcribed. |
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