Overview
GB 2762-2012 was China’s National Food Safety Standard for maximum levels of contaminants in foods. The Ministry of Health announced the standard on 13 November 2012; it took effect on 1 June 2013 and was replaced by GB 2762-2017 on 17 September 2017.
Scope
The standard set food-specific maximum levels for chemical contaminants in foods. The official NHC policy interpretation describes the 2012 revision as covering more than 20 food categories and more than 160 contaminant-limit entries, including lead, cadmium, mercury, arsenic, tin, nickel, chromium, nitrite, nitrate, benzo[a]pyrene, N-dimethylnitrosamine, polychlorinated biphenyls, and 3-chloro-1,2-propanediol.
Selected limits cited by source pages
| Matrix context | Analyte | Maximum level | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Foodstuffs cited by Liang et al. 2019 | Pb | 0.2 mg/kg | Source-cited comparator from GB 2762-2012 |
| Foodstuffs cited by Liang et al. 2019 | tHg | 0.02 mg/kg | Source-cited comparator from GB 2762-2012 |
This page is an omnibus routing anchor for source pages that cite GB 2762-2012. It does not reproduce the full legal schedule.
How this page interacts with HMT&C
This page records the Chinese regulatory comparator used by pre-2017 literature. It does not set or justify HMT&C certification thresholds. Current China-market comparisons should use the active GB 2762 framework, not this superseded version, unless a source specifically cites the 2012 standard.
Sources
- National Health Commission. Announcement No. 21 of 2012 issuing GB 2762-2012. Source URL: https://www.nhc.gov.cn/sps/c100088/201301/999e3ffd3984444eb70bbf908b1871c9.shtml
- National Health Commission. Q&A on GB 2762-2012, published 5 June 2013, stating the standard was issued on 13 November 2012 and came into force on 1 June 2013. Source URL: https://www.nhc.gov.cn/zwgk/zswd/201306/6833e7c948da4aaa961f24fe9da24d1b.shtml
- Analysis of Heavy Metals in Foodstuffs and an Assessment of the Health Risks to the General Public via Consumption in Beijing, China cites GB 2762-2012 as the comparator for Pb and Hg exceedance discussion in Beijing foodstuffs.
Verification notes
- Created 2026-05-18 during the Liang et al. 2019 merge-enhance because the source cited GB 2762-2012 and the previous source page linked to a nonexistent generic China GB 2762 page.
- The selected Pb and Hg rows are source-cited comparators from Liang et al. 2019, not a full extraction of GB 2762-2012.
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| e317189 | 2026-08-11 | correction | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 7 sections added |