SAMR (SAC) recently approved and released six voluntary national standards, including GB/T 18204.1-2025, Examination methods for public places—Part 1: Physical indicators. The revision is organized by the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration, and the series of standards will come into effect on December 1, 2025.

In recent years, hygienic safety in public places has received widespread social concerns. To implement the requirements of “building a healthy environment” proposed in the Healthy China Action Plan (2019-2030), the revision work focuses on addressing hygienic safety concerns in public places such as shopping malls, swimming pools, and hotels. Major changes are reflected in the following three aspects.

First, more comprehensive testing items. The standards add nine types of health indicators, covering those for air circulation such as fresh air volume and natural lighting coefficient, those for limits of harmful substances such as formaldehyde, PM2.5, and radon as radioactive gas, and those for pathogen prevention and control such as disinfection efficacy of swimming pool water, legionella and β-hemolytic streptococcus.

Second, more advanced testing technologies. The standards upgrade equipment requirements for air conditioning duct bacterial detection, and phase out methods such as carbon dioxide volume titration and formaldehyde gas chromatography.

Third, more standardized management requirements. In line with the common technical needs of public place hygiene monitoring, the standards uniformly adjust the frequency of hygiene monitoring, sample capacity and sampling, sample capacity for public supplies monitoring, and sample transportation in various public places.

This series of standards will further standardize the technical requirements for on-site sampling and testing methods of hygienic indicators in public places in China. The standards will provide technical support for improving the precision, accuracy, and comparability of results from inspection and testing institutions, making the public places around us safer and healthier.