China has issued its first mandatory national safety standard for cosmetics. GB 7916-2026 introduces maximum thresholds on heavy metals and microbes, and stricter requirements for children’s beauty products.
Set to take effect on January 1, 2028, the new standard will fully replace the 1987 Hygienic Standard for Cosmetics, which, as the name suggests, focused primarily on basic hygiene and safety requirements. GB 7916-2026, however, establishes explicit limits on eight heavy metals, imposes tiered microbiological limits, and regulates the full supply chain, from raw materials to transit.
“The new standard upgrades the focus from baseline hygiene to comprehensive safety, looking beyond whether a product has spoiled to assess the potential long-term impacts of use on human health,” Chris Wang, a Hangzhou-based compliance and market analyst, told BeautyMatter. “It introduces more scientific dimensions such as toxicological risk assessment and risk substance monitoring, representing a fundamental leap in philosophy.”
Brands will have a transition period, with products manufactured or imported before the January 2028 start date allowed to be sold until the end of their stated shelf life. But as compliance experts note, they’ll need to start reformulating high-risk SKUs and monitoring suppliers to protect their access to the world’s largest cosmetics market.
The new framework comes as China aims to support the development of its cosmetics market—worth RMB 1.1 trillion ($163.7 billion) in 2025—and maintain consistency with international standards. Here are some key changes:
Children’s cosmetics: While international regulations often apply additional safety considerations to cosmetics intended for children under age 3, China extends these requirements to children’s cosmetics for those up to age 12. Such products must meet a strict maximum microbial limit of 100 CFU/g (or mL), one-tenth the limit of general cosmetics.
Heavy metal limits: GB 7916-2026 introduces enforceable maximum thresholds for heavy metals and harmful impurities in finished products, including lead (≤10 mg/kg), mercury (≤1 mg/kg), arsenic (≤2 mg/kg), cadmium (≤5 mg/kg), methanol (≤2000 mg/kg), and dioxane (≤10 mg/kg), while asbestos and benzene must not be detectable. The EU does not have an equivalent standardized set of numerical limits for these contaminants in finished cosmetics.
Tiered microbiological limits: The new regulations tighten the total aerobic microbial count required from ≤500 to ≤100 CFU/g for products applied to sensitive areas and those intended for use by children, in addition to eye and lip cosmetics. Other standard cosmetic products, such as body lotions, hand creams, and hair products, must meet a limit of ≤1,000 CFU/g.
Updated prohibited substances: Regulators are expanding the list of prohibited chemical substances to over 1,200 entries, including steroids, pesticides, heavy metal salts, and industrial chemicals. A separate appendix covers banned plant and animal ingredients associated with sensitization, toxicity, or hormone-related effects.
Among the notable substances, Ryan Kung, International Cosmetics Regulatory Affairs Manager at Guangzhou-based regulatory consultancy QTCCC, highlights that lilial, a synthetic compound widely used to create a lily-of-the-valley scent in consumer goods, will be formally banned. This brings China in line with the EU’s 2022 ban, which was introduced due to concerns over lilial’s reproductive health risks.
Lifecycle oversight: China is broadening oversight beyond production to include packaging, labeling, storage, and transport. Under the new rules, substances from packaging or carrier materials, such as chemicals in the sleeve of a facial sheet mask or applicator pads, must not migrate into the product in amounts that pose health risks. Storage and transit conditions must also not cause quality deterioration, chemical degradation, or microbial contamination.
With these changes underway, what are the first steps brands should take?
Conduct a portfolio gap assessment. According to Jeff Jiang, Director of Regulatory Affairs for cosmetics at Cisema, which helps global manufacturers bring regulated products into APAC, brands should start with a structured portfolio-level assessment to determine where compliance gaps exist.
“Companies should map their existing China portfolio against the new requirements, including ingredient restrictions, harmful-substance limits, microbiological specifications, and other relevant product requirements,” Jiang told BeautyMatter. “Higher-risk categories, particularly children’s cosmetics and products for the eye and lip areas, should be prioritized.”
Wang said brands should pay particular attention to children’s cosmetics as “products can fall under strict 0-12-year rules via marketing or positioning, not only explicit labeling. Reformulation and hygiene adjustments add cost.”
Review raw-material and supplier specifications. Brands should engage suppliers early to determine if existing specifications, certificates, and quality controls satisfy China’s new standard. As Jiang described, brands not only need visibility into intentionally added ingredients but also impurities that may be present at trace levels—data that takes time to collect.
Kung echoed this advice. “The main challenge is batch-to-batch consistency, ensuring natural impurities from raw materials stay within the new limits. This requires closer supplier monitoring and potentially more frequent testing, but it is manageable without major formulation overhauls.”
Identify products requiring technical changes. Reformulation may be necessary if products contain banned ingredients such as lilial. However, as Jiang pointed out, a company with hundreds of SKUs cannot treat each product like its own regulatory project. As such, “products should be segmented by risk, ingredient profile, and existing compliance status, so that resources can be focused where remediation is most likely to be required.”
Develop an implementation and regulatory monitoring plan. Finally, brands should establish a system for monitoring China’s National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) for updates, recognizing that GB 7916-2026 is not necessarily static. This includes ensuring their safety assessment dossiers reflect China’s specific requirements rather than relying on foreign standards. “Foreign toxicology data often does not match NMPA expectations, requiring local expertise,” Wang concluded.
From raw materials to packaging, GB 7916-2026 fundamentally raises the bar for cosmetic safety in China. Going forward, brands selling in the country will have more to audit, and aligning with international regulations alone won’t be enough. To stay in this trillion-yuan market, they’ll need to reassess their products, suppliers, testing, and logistics—ideally, well before the 2028 deadline.