GB 15979-2024 Explained: The Numbers Behind a Compliant Sanitary Pad

On 1 July 2025, China replaced the national hygiene standard for disposable sanitary products. The old one, GB 15979-2002, had been running for 22 years. The new one is GB 15979-2024, and most people who work with it call it the strictest edition the category has seen.

The change that matters is not any single number. It is that safe stopped being a word you print on a pack and became a list of things you can test, and fail.

We make pads, so we went through it line by line when it came out. Here is what is actually in it, in the order a buyer would care about.

One note on scope, so the two pieces do not overlap: this is the technical reading — the numbers, which products they apply to, and what a test report should show. If what you need is which marketing claims the standard allows, that is a separate question, covered in Compliant Brand Promotion for Feminine Hygiene Products Under GB 15979-2024.

The categories are now spelled out

The 2024 edition sorts disposable sanitary products into defined groups — menstrual products, excreta-related products, sanitary wet wipes and others — and assigns requirements to each. Under the old version you could argue about which requirement applied to which product. That argument is largely gone.

Physical and chemical limits — and what each one actually applies to

This is the section that gets quoted badly, so read the last column carefully.

Indicator	Limit	Scope defined in the standard	Applies to an ordinary sanitary pad?
pH	4.0–9.0	Set by the product standard GB/T 8939 (2018 edition, currently in force)	Yes
pH, where a value is declared	Measured result must fall within the declared value ±1	Products that declare a pH on the pack	Only if declared
Migratable fluorescent whitening agents	Not detectable; not permitted in raw materials either	Paper-containing sanitary products	Only where paper is present
Lead / arsenic / mercury	≤10 / ≤2 / ≤1 mg/kg	Wet wipes, sanitary wet wipes, and antibacterial or bacteriostatic agents	No — not a pad requirement
Ethylene oxide residue	≤250 µg/g immediately after disinfection; ≤10 µg/g at the point of sale	Products disinfected with ethylene oxide	Only if EO-disinfected
Stability (shelf life)	≥1 year	Wet wipes and products containing antibacterial agents	No — not a pad requirement

Two points worth pulling out of that table.

The heavy metal limits — lead, arsenic, mercury — are written into the standard for wet wipes and for products carrying antibacterial agents. They are not a limit that an ordinary sanitary pad is tested against. Copying them onto a pad specification is exactly the kind of error a trained buyer spots in ten seconds, and it costs you the credibility the rest of your documentation earned.

And the ethylene oxide figures are two numbers for two moments: 250 µg/g straight after sterilisation, 10 µg/g by the time the pack reaches a shelf. The gap in between is the desorption period. It is not optional, and it is the reason a disinfection-grade product cannot simply be sterilised and shipped the same week.

Microbiological limits: two grades, one floor

Indicator	Ordinary grade	Disinfection grade
Total bacterial count	≤200 CFU/g	≤20 CFU/g
Total fungal count	≤100 CFU/g	Not detectable
Pathogens — coliforms, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus, haemolytic streptococci	Not detectable	Not detectable

The pathogen row does not relax. Whatever grade a pad carries, those four must not be detectable. The grade moves the count limits; it does not move the floor.

We covered what the two grades mean in practice, and why medical grade is not something a pad can be, in a separate piece.

Irritation is now a test, not an opinion

The standard assigns toxicology work by product condition: skin irritation, eye irritation, mucous membrane irritation, skin sensitisation. Whether a product irritates is something you run in a lab, not something you assert in a headline.

Antibacterial and bacteriostatic finally have numbers

These two words carry different thresholds, and the 2024 edition separates them explicitly.

• 抗菌 (antibacterial) — kill rate of ≥90% against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. If a claim also covers Candida albicans, the same bar applies to it.
• 抑菌 (bacteriostatic) — inhibition rate of ≥50% against the same two organisms, or an inhibition zone wider than 7.0 mm.

Keep the Chinese terms. They are the words printed on packs and on test reports, and loose translation is how the two get confused — which is precisely what the standard is trying to stop. A pack that says antibacterial owes you a 90% kill rate. One that says bacteriostatic owes you 50% inhibition. Neither one means the product has been disinfected.

What this changes for a buyer

Choosing a pad used to run on recommendations — a shop assistant, a blogger, the largest word on the front of the pack. Now there is something harder to argue with: the standard number printed on the back.

GB 15979 is the mandatory hygiene standard. GB/T 8939 is the product standard. A compliant pad has to satisfy both. If a pack does not print an execution standard at all, that absence is itself information.

For anyone working with a sanitary pad manufacturer in China, the practical move is unglamorous: ask for the test report, then check the numbers against the tables above. A factory that has actually run these tests sends the report without being asked twice.

That is the whole point of the revision. It gives wholesale buyers and private label programmes a shared vocabulary that does not depend on whoever writes the biggest word on the box.

Standards only get tighter. That is a good thing. An industry moves forward when its floor gets raised, not when its slogans get louder.

Li Genyuan, Foreign Trade Manager, Guangdong Nafei Industrial Co., Ltd.