Towards suitable tests for the migration of metals from ceramic and crystal tableware : work in support of the revision of the Ceramic Directive 84/500/EEC

Food contact materials (FCMs) are regulated in the European Union to ensure the functioning of the internal market and to protect the health and interests of the consumers. For ceramics, limits exist only for lead and cadmium under Directive 84/500/EEC but scientific data has shown the need to lower these and to consider limits for other metals. In addition, no harmonised European legislation exists for the glass sector. In initial consultation with Member States, the Commission defined so-called discussion starting values ('DSV') for potential future limits based on an initial risk management discussion. These DSVs were used to verify to what extent the analytical method would give a realistic estimate of the actual migration of metals to the food, and whether suitable analytical methods would be available. Both Member States and stakeholders identified too limited scientific knowledge on the migration of these metals into food and its testing. The Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety thus entrusted the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) to investigate testing methods for migration of metals from ceramics and glass. Between 2013 and 2017, the JRC's European Reference Laboratory for FCMs generated over 6 000 data points on hundreds of samples provided by industry. The findings of a series of studies on suitable test methodologies for tableware and cookware are summarised in this synthetic final report.