Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool

The FDA has published a variety of contaminant levels for poisonous or deleterious substances in human food in various guidance documents and regulations for industry. For ease of reference, the Chemical Contaminants Transparency Tool provides a consolidated list of these levels. Contaminant levels listed in the transparency tool include tolerances, action levels, guidance levels, derived intervention levels, recommended maximum levels, and advisory levels. Tolerances and action levels are defined in 21 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) parts 109 and 509. Other types of contaminant levels are not defined in the regulation but have been used to advise industry on levels of contamination that may pose a health risk or may be avoidable through good manufacturing practices.

Certain contaminant levels are not included in this transparency tool -- allowable levels listed in the quality standard for bottled water and marine biotoxin safety levels. These levels can be found at:

• 21 CFR 165.110 - Bottled Water
• Guidance for Industry: Fish and Fishery Products Hazards and Controls Guidance

The transparency tool was last updated on March 20, 2025. It is the responsibility of the user to be informed about changes in contaminant levels. We encourage users to refer to the guidance documents linked in the Reference column. The linked documents provide detailed information on how a commodity is defined and how the contaminant level is applied. To be alerted to newly issued guidance documents, you can subscribe to our e-mail updates on recently issued guidances using the "subscribe to email updates" button found on the Search for FDA Guidance Webpage.

Filter by Contaminant Type:

• Toxic Elements
• Mycotoxins
• Persistent Pesticides*
• Radionuclides
• Other Chemical Contaminants

*These action levels were set by FDA in consultation with EPA for residues of cancelled pesticide chemicals that persist in the environment and that were considered to be unavoidable in food and feed. Although the scope of this transparency tool is limited to human foods for other contaminants, pesticide action levels for both human food and animal food are included, as these levels were established without identifying the intended consumer (human or animal).

Search and Display Hints

• Select the contaminant name below to see information on the contaminant-commodity pair in a new window.
• To sort by a specific field, click on the column header for that field.
• To browse all the records in the transparency tool, use the Show All, First/Previous/Next/Last, and Jump To options at the bottom of the transparency tool.
• To search for a specific term or phrase, enter that term in the Search box and select Show Items to display only those records that contain the selected terms. (Note: This term will be searched in fields that may not be shown on the main page but are included in the full record description)
• The search results will return hits of records containing words that include the search term. For example, a search for "red" will return results that include terms such as reducing, ingredient, and denatured. To limit results to only the searched term, place a space before and after the word in the basic search or in the advanced search, use “this exact phrase” field.