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On May 30, 2025, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) introduced two mandatory national standards for coatings on the National Public Service Platform for Standard Information:
GB 30981.1-2025 Limit of Harmful Substances of Coating Materials - Part 1: Architectural Coatings
GB 30981.2-2025 Limit of Harmful Substances of Coating Materials - Part 2: Industrial Coatings
Note: ChemLinked's Ebook translation is available for download.
Both standards enter into force on June 1, 2026.
The purpose of these standards is to regulate the safety and environmental friendliness of coating products, promote the high quality and sustainable development of the coatings industry in China, and enhance the competitiveness of China's coating products in the international market.
GB 30981.1 shall replace some of the existing standards on coatings for architectural wall (GB 18582—2020) and interior floor (GB 38468—2019). In parallel, GB 30981.2 replaces standards on woodenware coating(GB 18581—2020), coating used for toys(GB 24613—2009), vehicle coatings(GB 24409—2020), marine coatings (GB 38469—2019) and industrial protective coatings (GB 30981—2020).
Part 1: Architectural coatings
GB 30981.1-2025 establishes the limitation requirements, testing methods, inspection rules, and packaging and labeling, etc., of various types of architectural coatings and their accessory materials.
Architectural coatings are classified into three categories: water-borne wall coatings, floor coatings, and accessory materials. Depending on the usage scenarios, the water-borne wall coatings are further divided into interior wall coatings and exterior wall coatings.
The standard sets up limits for various harmful substances, such as VOC content, SVOC content, formaldehyde, benzene, toluene and xylene, phthalates, heavy metals, for different categories.
Compared with the old national standards implemented since 2002, which only regulate putty used as accessory material in water-borne wall coatings and woodenware coatings, the new standard is expanding the regulation scope to include all accessory materials, including color paste, thinner (including for spray paint cleaning), curing agent, paint remover, interface agent, repair paste, joint water, whitening water, slow-drying water, colorant.
Part 2: Industrial coatings
GB 30981.2-2025 is introducing limits of harmful substances in various types of industrial coatings, which include coatings for consumer products that come into close contact with human body.
The affected consumer product coatings may cover coatings that directly contacting food like food containers, drinking water tanks, cookware, tableware and coatings for the exterior surfaces of consumer products like toys, furniture, stationery, music instruments, playground equipment, sports equipment, medical devices, wearable accessories, household appliances, mobile phones and digital products, bicycles, etc.
The limit value of phthalates, heavy metal content and soluble element content are established for these consumer product coatings. In addition, toy coatings should meet requirements for other harmful substances like benzene, PAHs, and methanol.
