This work aimed to summarize the sources and hazards of heavy metals in ceramic food contact materials, the relevant regulations at home and abroad, the factors affecting migration of lead and cadmium and the migration mechanism, so as to provide a theoretical basis for solving the safety problems existing in ceramic food contact materials in China, to improve the comprehensive supervision and management level of the safety of food packaging materials in China, and to promote the stable development of China's packaging industry and food industry as well. We carried out the analysis and summarization of the research progress by means of enumeration, parallelism and induction. Results showed that there was still a gap between China and developed countries in Europe and America in terms of relevant laws and regulations on lead and cadmium release. Many parameters such as the initial content of heavy metals in ceramic glaze layer, glaze composition ratio, sintering temperature, pH value of food, alcohol content, the storage time, and the storage temperature, they all had great influence on the migration of heavy metals according to the reference. In addition, there were few researches on the migration mechanism of heavy metals from ceramics at home and abroad. Although China is gradually in line with the international standards in the detection methods and limit standards of heavy metals in ceramic products, there still is a gap and a large research space in the influence of microscopic structure of ceramic products on migration mechanism.