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Heavy Metal Index

Hong Kong Mercury Control Ordinance - mercury in cosmetics

Regulation

Scope The loaded rows cover cosmetics under Schedule 3 Part 1 of the Mercury Control Ordinance, including skin-lightening soap and cream.

Page snapshot
Referenced by3 pages
Effective2021-12-01

Scope

The loaded rows cover cosmetics under Schedule 3 Part 1 of the Mercury Control Ordinance, including skin-lightening soap and cream. The schedule treats cosmetics as regulated mercury-added products unless the product falls within the unintentional trace exception or the eye-area mercury-preservative exception.

Exact limit and units

MetalMatrixLimitUnitBasis
MercuryCosmetic products with unintentional trace mercurynot exceeding 1ppmmercury content
MercuryEye-area cosmetic products containing mercury as preservative where no effective and safe substitute is availablenot exceeding 70ppmmercury content

How tested

The ordinance states mercury-content thresholds for the Schedule 3 product descriptions. It does not print a dedicated cosmetic analytical method in the schedule text.

Enforcement posture

The ordinance prohibits export, import, manufacture, and supply of regulated mercury-added products except as provided by permit or exemption. A cosmetic outside the stated exceptions is treated as a regulated mercury-added product.

History of changes

Cap. 640 commenced on 1 December 2021. The source is the verified copy last updated 27 March 2026; the cosmetics schedule item was replaced by L.N. 114 of 2025.

How it compares

These rows are mercury-only product controls under a Minamata implementation ordinance. They should not be expanded to lead, arsenic, or cadmium cosmetics limits.

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.

CommitDateChangeDescription
a8052bb2026-08-09major1 source added; contamination-profile values revised; 7 sections added