Scope
The restriction applies to consumer clothing or related accessories, textiles other than clothing that contact human skin to a similar extent, and footwear. It excludes parts made exclusively of natural leather, fur, or hide; non-textile fasteners and decorative attachments; second-hand goods; certain carpets/rugs/runners; PPE and medical-device scopes; and disposable textiles.
Exact limit and units
| metal | matrix | limit | unit | basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cadmium and its compounds, expressed as Cd metal | Covered consumer clothing, textile, accessory, or footwear homogeneous material | 1 | mg/kg | After extraction |
| Chromium VI compounds, expressed as Cr VI | Covered consumer clothing, textile, accessory, or footwear homogeneous material | 1 | mg/kg | After extraction |
| Arsenic compounds, expressed as As metal | Covered consumer clothing, textile, accessory, or footwear homogeneous material | 1 | mg/kg | After extraction |
| Lead and its compounds, expressed as Pb metal | Covered consumer clothing, textile, accessory, or footwear homogeneous material | 1 | mg/kg | After extraction |
How tested
Appendix 12 frames the limit as a maximum concentration by weight in homogeneous materials after extraction. The metal rows specify the extracted elemental basis: Cd metal, Cr VI, As metal, and Pb metal.
Enforcement posture
This is a directly applicable EU regulation amending REACH Annex XVII. Article 2 states that it is binding in its entirety and directly applicable in all Member States.
History of changes
The regulation was done at Brussels on October 10, 2018 and published in the Official Journal on October 12, 2018. Entry 72 states that the covered products shall not be placed on the market after November 1, 2020 when the relevant substances are present at or above the Appendix 12 limits.
How it compares
The four HMI metal rows share the same 1 mg/kg after-extraction threshold in homogeneous material. Chromium is explicitly chromium VI, while arsenic is expressed as elemental As extracted from arsenic-compound entries.
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 |