Scope
GB 28480-2012 covers adornments of various materials, excluding gems. It defines children’s jewellery as jewellery for children aged 14 years and under.
Exact limit and units
| Metal or provision | Matrix | Limit | Unit | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nickel release | Piercing articles during wound healing | 0.2 | microgram/cm2/week | release rate; not converted to µg/kg |
| Nickel release | Articles in prolonged skin contact | 0.5 | microgram/cm2/week | release rate; not converted to µg/kg |
| As | Metal adornments or metal adornment parts | 1,000 | mg/kg | total content |
| Cr(VI) | Metal adornments or metal adornment parts | 1,000 | mg/kg | total content |
| Hg | Metal adornments or metal adornment parts | 1,000 | mg/kg | total content |
| Pb | Metal adornments or metal adornment parts | 1,000 | mg/kg | total content |
| Cd | Metal adornments or metal adornment parts | 100 | mg/kg | total content |
| Pb | Children’s jewellery | 300 | mg/kg | total content |
| Sb | Children’s jewellery | 60 | mg/kg | soluble element |
| As | Children’s jewellery | 25 | mg/kg | soluble element |
| Cd | Children’s jewellery | 75 | mg/kg | soluble element |
| Cr | Children’s jewellery | 60 | mg/kg | soluble element |
| Pb | Children’s jewellery | 90 | mg/kg | soluble element |
| Hg | Children’s jewellery | 60 | mg/kg | soluble element |
How tested
Nickel release is measured under GB/T 19719 and GB/T 28485 as applicable. Hexavalent chromium is measured under GB/T 28019, and other harmful elements are measured under GB/T 28020 or GB/T 28021.
Enforcement posture
The standard is a mandatory national standard for covered adornments in China. Products that do not meet the applicable total-content, soluble-element, and nickel-release requirements are not compliant with the standard.
History of changes
GB 28480-2012 was issued as a Chinese national standard for harmful-element limits in adornments. The local source is the 2012 edition.
How it compares
The children’s-jewellery soluble-element table aligns closely with legacy toy-migration values for Sb, As, Cd, Cr, Pb, and Hg, while the total-content row adds separate limits for metal adornment materials. The nickel release provisions are important for compliance but use area/time units rather than mass fraction.
Sources
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 7 sections added |