The pollution of toxic elements has been serious since the rapid development of industrialization in China. There were no data about toxic element levels in raw milk in China. The object of this study was to survey the levels of 7 toxic elements residues in raw milk in China and assess the potential health risk of those residues. The 178 raw milk samples were collected from 8 main milk-producing provinces and from 3 types of milk stations in China, and were analyzed for arsenic (As), lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), mercury (Hg), aluminum (Al) and nickel (Ni) using inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Al, Pb, Hg, Ni, Cr, As were detected in 47.8% 29.2%, 28.1%,23.6%, 12.4% and 9.0% of total milk samples, respectively, and Cd was not detected in any samples. The levels of detected toxic elements were all below China’s regulated limits of As ≤0.1 mg/kg, Pb ≤0.05 mg/kg, Cr ≤0.3 mg/kg, Hg ≤0.01 mg/kg. The residue levels of the samples from the processing plants were lower than that from the large-scale farms and small farm cooperatives by the results of Nemerow pollution index analysis method and this could be related with the different manufacturing practices. The regional difference analysis results indicate that the raw milk samples from heavy industry provinces have relative high residue levels. The need for further attention to the raw milk of heavy industry regions is crucial. In all detected samples, the risks of the concentrations were far below the reference values. The HQ analysis showed that the residues of As, Pb, Hg, Cr, Al and Ni in the raw milk samples were not presenting potential risk to Chinese adult, if the daily intake was 300 mL.