Cetyl Alcohol
Cetyl alcohol is rated 2 on our list, in the low band, and the number is traced: Fulton 1989 graded it 2.
Like every rating here, it is for the raw ingredient tested alone, and a label does not print how much of it a product holds.
Hexadecyl alcohol and cetyl alcohol are two names for 1-hexadecanol. Our list carries both names as separate rows. It rates cetyl alcohol 2 and hexadecyl alcohol 5. The numbers do not overlap, so at least one of them is wrong.
The papers we read grade it 2 in Fulton 1989. The 2 for cetyl alcohol matches the grade in Fulton 1989. No paper we read gives the 5 for hexadecyl alcohol. The list records no source for either number.
Is cetyl alcohol comedogenic?
Cetyl Alcohol is rated 2 on the comedogenic scale, which is the low band.
A common fatty alcohol used as an emollient, emulsifier, and thickening agent.
- Comedogenic rating
- 2 out of 5
- Band
- Low: Little plugging in the rabbit-ear test. Fulton 1989 counts 0 to 1 as not significant and 2 as borderline.
- Where the number comes from
- Traced to Fulton 1989. The section on who rated it prints each grade.
- Composition
- Fatty Alcohol / Alcohols & Derivatives
- Also written as
- No common variants recorded
What a 2 means in practice
One and two are the low band. In the rabbit-ear test, Fulton 1989 counted 0 to 1 as not significant and 2 as borderline. A low grade on a rabbit's ear, which reacts more readily than human skin, is weak evidence of a problem on a person.
Two things change what this number is worth. Ingredients are listed in descending order of concentration, so cetyl alcohol near the top of a label matters far more than cetyl alcohol at the bottom. And the rating describes the raw ingredient on its own. A 2006 review in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology found that a rating for a single ingredient does not reliably predict how a finished formula behaves on human skin. The full story of the scale is here.
Who rated it
Our list gives cetyl alcohol 2. These are the figures the published rabbit-ear studies we have read give it, as printed in each paper's table.
| Paper | Grade | Tested as |
|---|---|---|
| Fulton 1989 | Grade 2 | Tested as Cetyl alcohol |
Ahn and colleagues 1985 reports mild comedogenicity in the rabbit ear canal, in an abstract that gives no 0 to 5 grade.
Our list's figure is within what these papers report.
Common questions
- Is cetyl alcohol comedogenic?
- Cetyl Alcohol is rated 2 on the comedogenic scale, which is the low band.
- Is cetyl alcohol non comedogenic?
- Not exactly. Cetyl Alcohol is rated 2, which is the low band rather than 0. Low and non-comedogenic are different things, and only a 0 means the second one.
- What is cetyl alcohol's comedogenic rating?
- 2 out of 5 on our list. It is classed as Fatty Alcohol / Alcohols & Derivatives.
Sources we checked this rating against
- Kligman AM, Kwong T. “An improved rabbit ear model for assessing comedogenic substances.” British Journal of Dermatology, June 1979;100(6):699–702. (opens in a new tab) The rabbit-ear assay behind published 0 to 5 comedogenicity grades.
- Fulton JE Jr. “Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products.” Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists, November/December 1989;40(6):321–333. (opens in a new tab) Rabbit ear. Each ingredient at 10 percent in propylene glycol unless stated, applied five days a week for two weeks, and graded 0 to 5 from the width of the follicles, measured by micrometer and under the microscope. The paper counts 0 to 1 as not significant, 2 to 3 as borderline and 4 to 5 as positive. Some grades depended on the supplier of the raw material, and some oils were also tested refined.
- Ahn HY, Myung KB, Hahm JH, Kook HI. “An experimental study on comedogenicity of several external contactants.” Korean Journal of Dermatology, October 1985;23(5):620–629. (opens in a new tab) Rabbit ear canal; in the abstract’s words, the materials were applied to one ear canal of rabbits "for 6 weekdays for 2 weeks". Read at abstract level: the full text is not online. The abstract sorts ingredients into none, mild, moderate and severe with no 0 to 5 grade, and lists propylene glycol under both none and moderate. Kligman 1996 says that putting test materials inside the ear canal gave false positives in his own 1972 study, because loose horny material collects in the follicles there.
- Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. “A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept.” Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, March 2006;54(3):507–512. doi:10.1016/j.jaad.2005.11.1058 (opens in a new tab) Tested finished products on the backs of six people and concluded that “Finished products using comedogenic ingredients are not necessarily comedogenic.”