Porecelain

Flawless skin starts with the fine print.

Isopropyl Lanolate

Isopropyl lanolate is rated Caution on a single rabbit-ear reading: Morris and Kwan graded the exact material 3 on a 0–5 scale in 1983, applied undiluted. Fulton, whose tables most circulating scores are attributed to, has no row for it — not in the 1989 survey, not in the 1984 paper.

Caution Low confidence Legacy score 3 on a 0-5 scale · Morris & Kwan 1983 · low reliability

Morris & Kwan 1983 graded it 3 of 5, neat, in the rabbit ear. One assay, no replication.

What it is

Isopropyl lanolate is a mixture of the isopropyl esters of lanolin's fatty acids. Lanolin — the whole wax scoured from sheep's wool — is split into its acid and its alcohol fractions; the acids are then esterified with isopropyl alcohol. So this is not lanolin, and it is not the lanolin alcohols: it is the acid half of lanolin, capped with an isopropyl group. Ingredient registries carry it under CAS 63393-93-1 and EC 264-119-1, distinct from lanolin's and from the acetylated lanolins', with the substance name "fatty acids, lanolin, iso-Pr esters". That name is worth reading closely. It describes a mixture, not a molecule. The acids recovered from lanolin span a wide range of chain lengths and structures, they vary with the source wool and its refining, and one distributor's technical sheet describes its own material as molecularly distilled into separate molecular-weight fractions. There is no single formula for isopropyl lanolate, and two grades sold under that INCI name need not be the same material. Registries list its functions as skin conditioning and emollient, and also as antistatic, binding and emulsifying-surfactant. Supplier literature describes it as a paste or soft solid used for slip, gloss and pigment dispersion. On a label it reads simply as Isopropyl Lanolate.

Why we rate it Caution

We rate it Caution at Low confidence, and the whole of the evidence is one rabbit-ear assay. Start with where the number does not come from. This project originally carried a 3 for isopropyl lanolate that had reached us through Banish's ingredient list, filed as though James Fulton had measured it. Neither of his tables says he did. Fulton scored lanolin derivatives at length in both of his rabbit-ear papers — anhydrous lanolin, the lanolin alcohols, acetylated lanolin, the ethoxylated and PEG lanolins — but neither the 1989 survey (J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333, 220 rows, read off the journal scan) nor the 1984 paper (J Am Acad Dermatol 10:96–105) contains a row for isopropyl lanolate. A 3 attributed to Fulton is attributed to the wrong paper. A real 3 does exist, in a different paper. Morris and Kwan, in 1983 (J Soc Cosmet Chem 34:215–225), ran their own rabbit-ear survey — a separate laboratory, six years before Fulton's 1989 work, and one that contradicts him in print on other materials. Their table carries a row reading "Isopropyl Lanolate — 3", on the 0–5 scale, and the material named is the material on this page: no dropped word, no neighbouring row standing in for it. The row carries no dilution note, and their stated default was undiluted, so the 3 describes the neat material. Their method was the rabbit ear canal: three rabbits, fourteen applications, the follicles then graded under a microscope. What we have not established is whether the 3 on the consumer charts is that measurement or a coincidence. We did not follow the chain from any list back to Morris and Kwan, and matching numbers do not prove copying. Two things can be said with the documents in hand: a 3 credited to Fulton is misattributed, and a 3 credited to nobody in particular happens to match a reading somebody really took. The surrounding lanolin rows are context, not corroboration, and they do not line up as neatly as they first appear. Morris and Kwan graded seven lanolin materials, all on the same 0–5 scale: a plain lanolin at 0, two lanolin oils at 0–1 and 1, a lanolin alcohol at 30% in mineral oil at 1–2, isopropyl lanolate neat at 3, and a lanolin acid at 50% in mineral oil at 4. Two of those rows were diluted and the others were not, so the column is not a like-for-like ranking of the fractions. And the highest reading in their lanolin section, 4–5, belongs to acetylated lanolin alcohol. That is an alcohol-derived material, not an acid ester, which is enough to sink the tidy story that the acid half of lanolin is where the comedogenic signal sits. Nothing in the paper tests why the ester mixture responded as it did. What the paper supports is narrower and it is the rating: one material named isopropyl lanolate, applied neat, graded 3 of 5.

What the evidence doesn’t tell you

Everything above rests on one rabbit-ear assay — three rabbits, fourteen applications to the ear canal, follicles read under a microscope. That is not a human face and not a finished formula. A rabbit-ear grade is a screen, not a clinical outcome. It is also a neat-material result. Because Morris and Kwan's default was undiluted and the isopropyl lanolate row carries no dilution note, the 3 describes 100% material, which is not how anyone meets it. We can bound the use level only loosely: one distributor's technical sheet recommends its own grade at 1–5%. That is a supplier recommendation for one product, not a survey of what finished cosmetics contain. A concentration-of-use survey does exist in a Cosmetic Ingredient Review re-review packet, but the copy we read is stamped "Distributed for Comment Only — Do Not Cite or Quote" on its cover, so we are not quoting its figures. No dose-response series for this ingredient was identified in any of the rabbit-ear papers. It is a single measurement. We identified no second comedogenicity assay of isopropyl lanolate, either in the legacy corpus this project holds or in our own searching, so nothing has confirmed or contradicted the 3. Morris and Kwan's independence from Fulton is real — a different laboratory, six years before his 1989 survey, and neither of his tables carries a row for this material — but independence is not replication. One more Fulton paper sits in this project's corpus unread: Fulton JE, Bradley S, Agueda A, Black T, "Noncomedogenic cosmetics", Cutis 17:344 (1976), which reaches us only through a Cosmetic Ingredient Review assessment quoting two of its rows. We cannot say what it did or did not test, and an unread table is not an empty one. We also do not know what was in the jar. Isopropyl lanolate is a mixture whose composition follows the source lanolin, the acid fraction recovered from it, and how far the ester is distilled or fractionated afterwards. Morris and Kwan name suppliers or trade grades for several of their other lanolin rows and name none for this one, so we cannot say which grade produced the 3, or whether a grade sold today would reproduce it. We identified no human comedogenicity study of isopropyl lanolate: no comedone counts, no facial trial, no follicular biopsy. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review reaffirmed in 2023 that the ingredient is safe as used in cosmetics, but the data behind that conclusion are toxicological, irritation and sensitization endpoints. Those are different endpoints from follicular plugging, and a safe-as-used conclusion says nothing about whether the material clogs a pore. Finally, we do not label the 3 borderline or positive. Those words belong to Fulton's grade keys, and his two papers do not even agree with each other: the 1989 key calls 2–3 borderline, while the 1984 key calls 3 and above positive. We hold Morris and Kwan's numbers, not their grading key, and we are not going to import another laboratory's thresholds — or pick between two of them — to tell you what their 3 is supposed to count as.

Where you’ll see it

Isopropyl lanolate is a leave-on emollient. Supplier literature lists it for skin and hair care products, colour cosmetics, and lipstick and other stick cosmetics; a formulations database indexes it in eye liners, lipsticks and glosses, and foundations and concealers. Those are documented applications, not a measured prevalence — we have not audited the market, and label position is not a dose. On a label it reads as Isopropyl Lanolate. Do not confuse it with Lanolin, with the Lanolin Alcohol fraction, or with Acetylated Lanolin Alcohol. They are separate ingredients, with separate labels, and in the one survey that measured them side by side they carried separate scores.

Sources

Each source says what it actually is. Several widely-cited “sources” for comedogenic ratings are republishing the same 1989 assay, and counting them as independent agreement is how a thin evidence base gets made to look thick.

  1. Morris WE, Kwan SC. "Use of the rabbit ear model in evaluating the comedogenic potential of cosmetic ingredients." J Soc Cosmet Chem 34:215–225 (1983) The only primary comedogenicity measurement of isopropyl lanolate we identified, and the source of its score. A rabbit-ear-canal assay on the 0–5 scale: three rabbits, the ingredient applied undiluted unless a dilution is stated, fourteen applications, follicles graded microscopically and by that method alone. 32 rows in total. Genuinely independent of Fulton — a different laboratory, six years before his 1989 survey, and one that contradicts him in print on other materials — but still a legacy rabbit-ear screen, not human data, with no dose-response series and no supplier or trade grade given for this row. Its table prints "Isopropyl Lanolate — 3" for the exact material, and grades six other lanolin materials alongside it, two of them diluted in mineral oil. Transcribed verbatim into this project's legacy-assay reference from the printed table.
  2. Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333 (1989) The largest of the rabbit-ear tables and the one most circulating comedogenic scores are attributed to — cited here for what it does not contain. Method: the ingredient at roughly 10% in propylene glycol, applied to the inner ear of three New Zealand albino rabbits, five days a week for two weeks, follicular keratosis measured under a micrometer, 0–5 scale, with the key 0–1 not significant, 2–3 borderline, 4–5 positive. All 220 rows transcribed visually from the journal scan. It scores many lanolin derivatives and has no isopropyl lanolate row, in any table. This establishes only that the score commonly quoted for this ingredient is not Fulton's; an absent row is not a zero.
  3. Fulton JE, Pay SR, Fulton JE III. "Comedogenicity of current therapeutic products, cosmetics, and ingredients in the rabbit ear." J Am Acad Dermatol 10:96–105 (1984) Fulton's earlier rabbit-ear paper, cited for the same absence. Different method from the 1989 survey — two rabbits rather than three, one ear dosed daily for two weeks against the opposite ear as control — and, importantly, a different grade key on the same 0–5 numbers: 1–2 not significant, 3 and above positive. Its Table I lists acetylated lanolin, ethoxylated lanolin, anhydrous lanolin and lanolin alcohol under Lanolins, and no isopropyl lanolate. Read from a 400dpi transcription of the journal scan. Together with the 1989 survey it establishes that neither of the two Fulton tables this project has read assigns this material a score.
  4. Fiume MM, Bergfeld WF, Belsito DV, et al. "Isopropyl Lanolate." Int J Toxicol 42(3_suppl):56S–57S (2023) The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel's published re-review, in its final journal form — not the comment-stage packet that circulates at a similar name. The Panel reviewed information that had become available since its original 1980 assessment, along with updated product types and frequency and concentration of use, and reaffirmed that isopropyl lanolate is safe as used. A safety conclusion, on toxicological, irritation and sensitization endpoints. It counts no comedones and measures no follicular keratinisation, so it can neither support nor contradict the rabbit-ear grade.
  5. MakingCosmetics Inc. — Isopropyl Lanolate technical product page (distributor technical data, read 2026-08-01) A distributor's technical sheet for one commercial grade, cited only for material description and a bounded use level. It gives CAS 63393-93-1, describes the material as lanolin fatty acids reacted with isopropyl alcohol and then molecularly distilled to separate molecular-weight fractions, lists it as a paste or solid for skin and hair care, colour cosmetics and stick cosmetics, and recommends 1–5% use. Vendor literature for a product it sells: it is evidence of what one supplier offers and advises, not a market survey, not a specification for the material Morris and Kwan tested, and not comedogenicity data.

Others in the same family

Lanolin & derivatives behave similarly enough that the evidence for one is often wrongly read across to the others. These are its structural relatives, not a guess. What the evidence says about lanolin & derivatives as a family ›

Last reviewed 2026-08-01 · How we decide

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