Release Version 3.0 of the ASEAN Guidelines on Limits of Contaminants for Cosmetics provides guidance on microbial and heavy-metal contaminant limits for marketed cosmetic products. The version history states that this release was adopted at the 30th ASEAN Cosmetic Scientific Body meeting in Myanmar on 18-19 June 2019.
The routeable heavy-metal table sets maximum limits for mercury, lead, arsenic, and cadmium in cosmetic products, stated as mg/kg or mg/L with ppm equivalents. The cadmium row carries a country-specific footnote: due to national regulatory requirements, Thailand applies a cadmium limit of 3 mg/kg or 3 mg/L (3 ppm), rather than the regional 5 ppm value. Arsenic is recorded as total arsenic (tAs) because the guideline says arsenic without specifying inorganic arsenic, and mercury is recorded as total mercury (tHg) because the guideline says mercury without specifying methylmercury.
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 | minor | Narrative text revised |