Is acetylated lanolin comedogenic?

Short answer

Reported concern

The 1984 rabbit ear assay reports lanolin derivatives among the materials that produced comedones, and acetylated lanolin is recorded here as a reported concern at animal-model evidence level on that basis. What the source describes is the derivative family rather than a measured result for this exact material in human skin, so the entry rests on a group finding rather than a reading taken from acetylated lanolin itself. Nothing here establishes how a product containing it behaves on your face.

Recorded as Acetylated Lanolin · dataset record acetylated-lanolin · reviewed 2026-08-06

What the evidence actually is

Animal-model evidence

The material was applied to animal skin — in this dataset, a rabbit ear assay. It is a screening model, and the human-assay literature reports that it overreacts to comedogenic materials relative to human testing.

What the sources report

The cited rabbit ear assay reports lanolin derivatives among the materials that produced comedones.

What this does not cover

The cited source reports this at the level of lanolin derivatives as a family in an animal model, not as a measured rating for this exact material in human skin. The rabbit ear model is reported to overreact, and finished products containing such ingredients were not necessarily comedogenic in later human testing.

Why people ask about Acetylated lanolin

Lanolin occupies an unusual position: it is a long-established emollient with a devoted following for very dry skin, and simultaneously one of the most frequently named ingredients on pore-clogging lists. Acetylated lanolin turns up in lip products, heavy creams and older cosmetic formulations, so people tend to meet it while working out why a rich moisturiser seemed to coincide with congestion. The lanolin sensitivity discussion runs alongside the comedogenicity one and the two are easy to conflate, though they are separate questions and this record speaks only to the second.

Where the circulating rating for Acetylated lanolin comes from

The number circulating for acetylated lanolin inherits a family result. Fulton's 1984 rabbit ear work reports lanolin derivatives as a group among the comedogenic materials, and lists built from it assign figures to individual derivatives that the source did not measure separately. Two later findings are dropped in the process: the human-assay methodology literature reports that the rabbit ear model overreacts relative to human testing, and the 2006 human study of finished products found that products formulated with ingredients previously identified as comedogenic were not necessarily comedogenic themselves. A per-derivative figure is therefore more precise than the evidence underneath it.

Names Acetylated lanolin appears under

Declared as Acetylated Lanolin, and sometimes written as lanolin, acetylated. It is a distinct material from lanolin alcohol, which has its own record here, and from lanolin itself. Acetylated lanolin alcohol is a further separate declaration again. These names are close enough that lists routinely treat them as interchangeable; this project keeps them apart, because a family-level finding is not a measurement of any one member.

Recognised in this dataset as Acetylated Lanolin, and through the recorded aliases lanolin, acetylated, acetylated lanolin alcohol. Matching is exact: there is no fuzzy matching anywhere in this tool, so a name not listed here is reported as unrecognised rather than guessed at.

Questions about acetylated lanolin

Is acetylated lanolin the same as lanolin alcohol?

No. They are separate declared materials with separate records here, both carrying the same family-level finding from the same source. Neither was measured individually in the cited assay, so a result for one is not a measurement of the other, and this project does not carry figures across between them.

Does a lanolin allergy have anything to do with this?

It is a different question and this record does not address it. Lanolin sensitivity is a contact-reaction topic; comedogenicity is about whether a material produces comedones. Nothing in the sources reviewed here connects the two, and a page about one should not be read as evidence about the other.

Why is this recorded as a concern if the exact material was not tested?

Because the source does report a concern, at the level it actually examined. Recording it as a reported concern at animal-model tier, and saying plainly that the finding was made about the derivative family, is more accurate than either assigning this material its own figure or discarding the finding entirely.

Sources cited on this page

These are the sources attached to this record. Nothing on this page is drawn from anything else.

  • Comedogenicity of current therapeutic products, cosmetics, and ingredients in the rabbit ear

    Fulton JE Jr, Pay SR, Fulton JE 3rd. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 1984. Peer-reviewed. doi:10.1016/s0190-9622(84)80050-x

    Rabbit ear assay. This is the historical origin of most ingredient-level comedogenicity lists in circulation today. The assay is a screening model in animal skin, not a measurement of how a finished cosmetic behaves on a human face. Later work (see src-baek-2016) reports that this model overreacts relative to human testing.

  • Analysis of comedone, sebum and porphyrin on the face and body for comedogenicity assay

    Baek JH, Ahn SM, Choi KM, Jung MK, Shin MK, Koh JS. Skin Research and Technology, 2016. Peer-reviewed. doi:10.1111/srt.12244

    Human comedogenicity assay methodology study in 66 volunteers. States that the rabbit ear model can replace human testing for screening purposes but that a number of studies have pointed out its disadvantage of overreacting to comedogenic materials. This is the citation behind every 'animal-model evidence may overstate the result' limitation in this dataset.

  • A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept

    Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, 2006. Peer-reviewed. doi:10.1016/j.jaad.2005.11.1058

    Applied a modification of the Mills and Kligman human assay to finished cosmetic products formulated with ingredients previously identified as comedogenic. Reported that finished products using comedogenic ingredients are not necessarily comedogenic. This is the single most important source in this dataset: it is the direct evidence that an ingredient-level match cannot be converted into a finished-product conclusion.

Record reviewed 2026-08-06 by pore-checker prototype dataset compilation (not clinically reviewed).