Poli International · materials compliance
Most compliance advice in body art is copied from other compliance advice.
I check the regulation. Send me your suppliers’ declarations and I will tell you where you are exposed, citing the article, not a summary of it.
Send your product list, supplier declarations, safety data sheets or test certificates — whatever exists. The first look costs nothing.
Three questions you may be asked
If a client, a buyer or an inspector asked today, could you answer?
Which nickel release limit applies to the jewellery you put in a fresh piercing, and can you show a test result against it?
It is 0.2 µg/cm²/week for post assemblies inserted into pierced parts of the body. The 0.5 figure is for prolonged contact with intact skin. Any source quoting 0.5 for piercings has the two categories the wrong way round. REACH Annex XVII, Entry 27EN 1811:2023
A customer asks whether an item contains a substance of very high concern. Do you know your deadline?
Above 0.1 % by weight you owe them an answer within 45 days. The Candidate List reached 253 entries on 4 February 2026. If you cannot answer because you never asked your supplier, the gap already exists. REACH Article 33Candidate List, 253 entries
Does your studio meet the room requirement in the country you are selling into?
France requires single-use sterile or sterilised instruments and a room used exclusively for the procedure, with the activity declared to the ARS. It is a declaration regime, not a licence, and most English-language summaries still describe it wrongly. CSP R. 1311-4CSP R. 1311-2
What you get
A written position on where you stand, and what to ask for next.
An exposure list
Every item or material where your paperwork does not currently support what is being claimed, ranked by what would cause you a problem first.
The article behind each finding
Annex, entry, article number. Checked against ECHA, EUR-Lex and Légifrance directly, so you can verify any line without taking my word for it.
The exact question to send your supplier
Written so it is answerable. Most supplier requests fail because they ask for “compliance” instead of a named test against a named limit.
Checked against
Not one database. 21, across 6 groupings.
This is the part people underestimate before they try it. The registers disagree on vocabulary, several answer an automated request with a block and have to be reached another way, and the one that finally settles a question is rarely the one you started in.
European Union
- ECHA — SVHC Candidate List, Annex XVII restrictions, C&L Inventory, SCIP
- EUR-Lex — consolidated EU law and the Official Journal
- EU CELLAR — the metadata service behind EUR-Lex — proves a link is the act it claims
- Safety Gate (RAPEX) — EU alerts on dangerous non-food products
France
- Légifrance — code de la santé publique and consolidated French law, via the PISTE API
- Journal officiel — the signed publication that actually governs
- JUDILIBRE — Cour de cassation case law
- ANSES / ANSM — French health-safety and medicines agencies
United Kingdom
- legislation.gov.uk — UK statute and statutory instruments
- HSE — UK REACH restrictions and dossiers
- GOV.UK — departmental publications and guidance
- MHRA — device alerts and recalls
United States
- Federal Register — rules, notices and guidance availability
- govinfo — the signed PDF of record
- FDA — MoCRA, cosmetics and device recalls
Standards
- ISO — catalogue and scope — ISO 10993, ISO 11135
- CEN / EN — harmonised European standards — EN 1811 nickel release
- ASTM — material specifications — F136 titanium
Scientific literature
- Crossref — DOI registry — settles whether a paper is the paper cited
- PubMed / Europe PMC — biomedical literature
- doi.org — persistent resolution, so a citation survives a site redesign
Which of these a given review touches depends on what you sell and where you sell it. A studio in one country and a manufacturer shipping into four are not the same job, and I will tell you which applies to you before you pay.
Who is doing the review
Patrick Poli — creator of BioFlex® body jewelry
- Twenty-five years manufacturing body jewellery polymers. I built the moulds and ran the production. I am not a consultant who read the regulation afterwards.
- Fourteen months searching for a material that met the standard I wanted. Four grades of certified PP-R random copolymer trialled, one selected as right for body piercing, then named and registered as BioFlex®.
- I helped Bournemouth Borough Council write their piercing regulations when they had none, and held those certifications before any regulator asked for them.
- I created the push-fit connection system for polymer body jewellery, and set the internal hole sizes the market then followed into steel, titanium and gold.
A distinction I insist on
The biocompatibility certification belongs to the resin and was issued by the chemical producer I buy it from, not by me. I did not commission that testing and I will not imply I did. What I did was find the material, apply it correctly, manufacture it properly, and keep its identity out of public reach for 25 years so it could not be copied.
Resin certification: ISO 10993-6 USP Class VI
If I am this careful about a credential that would flatter me, you can judge how careful I will be with yours.
Why this exists
Because the industry’s own material information is wrong, and people buy on it.
BioFlex® body jewelry and Bioplast are PP-R random copolymers. They are routinely described as TPU or urethane, including in AI-generated articles that now feed search results and assistants. Restrictions written around TPU behaviour then get applied to a materially different polymer, and practitioners make purchasing and client-safety decisions on the result.
That is a checkable error, and it is the same failure mode as compliance advice copied from other compliance advice. The remedy is unglamorous: go to the instrument, read what it says, cite it, and let anyone check you.
Cost and scope
Fixed price, agreed before I start.
Send what you have: supplier declarations, safety data sheets, test certificates, or simply the product list if that is all there is. I will tell you whether a review is worth doing before you pay anything. If your paperwork is already sound, I will say so and there is nothing to buy.
No charge
First look
Send your product list. You get one written reply telling you whether there is an exposure worth paying to investigate.
€250
Single review
One product line or material. Written exposure list, the article behind each finding, and the exact question to send your supplier.
€900
Manufacturer audit
A full product range. Everything above across the catalogue, plus where the same gap repeats and which supplier is causing it.
Both fees are fixed and agreed in writing before I start. If a review turns out to be larger than expected, that is my estimating error, not your invoice. REACH Guard PRO is the ongoing monitoring afterwards, for when you want the lists watched rather than checked once.
Fees are quoted and invoiced in euro, which is the currency the underlying rules are written in. If you are in the United States or the United Kingdom that changes nothing on your side: your card converts at the day’s rate, and I will quote the amount in your currency before you commit to anything.