China’s State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) has issued a notice to consult public comments on maximum concentration limits of lead (Pb) and arsenic (As) in health tea drinks on the Chinese market.
The notice instructs that for health tea drinks which contain 30% or more tea formula, the Pb limit should be not higher than 2.0 mg/kg and the As limit not higher than 1.0 mg/kg. If the tea formula concentration is less than 30%, Pb limit and As limit are recommended to be not higher than 0.5 mg/kg and 0.3 mg/kg, respectively. Health drinks using tea extracts as crude materials are recommended to adopt 0.5 mg/kg for maximum limit of Pb and 0.3 mg/kg for As.
The limit specification has been drafted under China’s "General standard for health (functional) foods, GB 16740-1997", in response to some recent quality chaos of the health drinks market. Interested parties are welcomed to submit commentary feedbacks to the agency before 15 April 2012.
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