Polysorbate 80
Polysorbate 80 is rated Clear, and for once the comedogenic number attached to it was measured on the material named: Fulton's 1989 rabbit-ear survey scored Polysorbate 80 a 0 on a 0 to 5 scale. The score that gets confused with it belongs to a differently-named neighbour — sorbitan oleate, sold as Span 80 — which Fulton scored 3.
Mild solubilizer/emulsifier; non-comedogenic.
What it is
A nonionic surfactant used to emulsify and to solubilise: it lets a small amount of oil or fragrance disperse into a water-based formula and helps keep an emulsion stable. On a label it is Polysorbate 80. Chemically it is polyoxyethylene (20) sorbitan monooleate, sold for decades under the trade name Tween 80, CAS 9005-65-6. That name is a specification rather than one molecule: the commercial material is a mixture of partial esters of sorbitan and its anhydrides, ethoxylated to a nominal total of about twenty ethylene-oxide units, with oleic acid, the C18:1 fatty acid, as the fatty part. The ethylene-oxide chains make it strongly water-loving — its HLB is around 15 — which is why it works on the water side of a formula rather than as a rich emollient. It is a yellowish, viscous liquid. Keep it separate from two near neighbours it is easy to run together: Polysorbate 20, the same molecule built on lauric acid instead of oleic; and sorbitan oleate, sold as Span 80, which is the plain, un-ethoxylated sorbitan monooleate that Polysorbate 80 is made from. All three are distinct INCI materials with their own entries here, and — the point of this page — their own scores.
Why we rate it Clear
We rate it Clear, at Low confidence. The evidence is a single legacy number, and being exact about what that number is, and which material it belongs to, is the whole of the page. The number. Polysorbate 80 appears in James Fulton's 1989 rabbit-ear survey, the source of nearly every comedogenic score in circulation. His method: the ingredient diluted to about 10% in propylene glycol, 1 ml applied to the inner ear of three New Zealand albino rabbits, five days a week for two weeks, follicles then read for keratosis. Read the actual table and the row labelled "Polysorbate 80" reads 0, on a 0 to 5 scale. It carries no asterisk and it does not sit in the paper's oils section, so the "results depend on source of raw material" caveat that governs the oils and butters does not ride on it. By Fulton's own key — printed in his methods and quoted far less often than the numbers — a grade of 0 to 1 "is not considered significant." A 0 is the floor of that band. Material identity, and why this page exists. Most of the notorious numbers on this site turn out to belong to a material sitting next to the one on the label — a butter read as an oil, a derivative read as its parent. Polysorbate 80 is the rare case where the circulating number was measured on the material named. Fulton's table has a "Polysorbate 80" row, and it reads 0; he also scored the shorter sibling, Polysorbate 20, at 0. The confusion, where there is one, runs to sorbitan oleate. That is Span 80 — the plain sorbitan monooleate, without the ethylene-oxide chains — and Fulton scored it 3, the highest reading in this cluster of emulsifiers. Two different molecules that share the oleic-acid tail and the trade number 80; one was measured at 0 and one at 3. A "3" attached to Polysorbate 80 cannot be traced to Fulton's Polysorbate 80 row, which reads 0; sorbitan oleate is a nearby but different row, and it is the one scored 3. The cluster, for context. In the same table the other sorbitan and polysorbate emulsifiers mostly read low: Polysorbate 20 at 0, sorbitan stearate at 0, PEG 40 sorbitan laurate at 0, PEG 40 castor oil at 0, sorbitan sesquinoleate at 0 to 1*, with sorbitan laurate and sorbitan isostearate both at 1 to 2* — the top of those two ranges touching 2, the floor of the band Fulton called borderline — and sorbitan oleate at 3 the highest of them. That is a pattern in one laboratory's ingredient set, not a mechanism we can demonstrate, and the paragraph above is careful not to turn it into one.
What the evidence doesn’t tell you
Across the four numeric inventories we checked — Fulton 1989, Fulton 1984, Morris and Kwan 1983 and Nguyen 2007 — only Fulton 1989 carries a reading of Polysorbate 80 itself. Morris and Kwan's 1983 rabbit study, a contemporary assay that openly contradicts Fulton on several materials, prints 32 rows including Polysorbate 20 at 0 (tested at 1% in water) — but Polysorbate 20 is the C12 sibling, not this material, so it is a reading of the relative and not of Polysorbate 80. We identified no human comedogenicity study of it. The 0 is one lab, one method, one decade, and one animal model that is not human. Fulton called his own survey "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research." Do not read a mechanism off two rows. It is tempting to say the ethylene-oxide chain is what dropped Span 80's 3 to Polysorbate 80's 0. Two adjacent rows cannot establish that, and Fulton's own text runs the other way for a different family: he wrote that the classic anhydrous lanolins are not as comedogenic as the moderately ethoxylated derivatives. Ethoxylation did not move every family in the same direction in his hands, so we report the two numbers and decline the causal story. The caution a reader is most likely to meet for this ingredient is not a comedogenic one, and it answers a different question. Polysorbate 80 appears on fungal-acne, or Malassezia, avoidance lists. Malassezia folliculitis is a yeast-driven eruption, distinct from the comedones the word "comedogenic" refers to. We identified no comedone data behind that caution, and we are not going to print a mechanism for it either — the lists we found give none we can trace to a measurement. It may matter to a reader whose problem is fungal, but it is not evidence about pores, and this rating is about pores. And the ingredient is an emulsifier doing a job. A 0 on an isolated-ingredient rabbit assay describes the raw material, not the finished product it disperses oils inside; Draelos and DiNardo's 2006 re-evaluation found finished products testing non-comedogenic despite containing ingredients the rabbit assay had flagged, and a 2025 review in JAAD Reviews found that no standardised comedogenicity test exists and that "non-comedogenic" is an unregulated label. So a low rabbit score is a reason to hold the concern lightly, not a guarantee for a given face at a given concentration.
Where you’ll see it
On a label it is Polysorbate 80. The categories here are illustrative rather than a market survey we have run: it turns up where a little oil or fragrance has to go into water — facial cleansers, micellar waters, toners and sprays, and light serums and lotions — and in colour cosmetics, where it helps disperse pigment. The name is familiar from outside skincare too: it is a food additive (E433) and a common pharmaceutical excipient. Two neighbours are rated separately and should not be read off this page: Polysorbate 20, the lauric-acid version, and sorbitan oleate — Span 80 — the un-ethoxylated parent, which carries the 3.
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.
- Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333 (1989) The primary source of nearly every comedogenic score online, and the only numeric assay of Polysorbate 80 we hold. Read off a render of the journal scan rather than from a list quoting it. Method: ingredient at roughly 10% in propylene glycol, 1 ml applied to the inner ear of three New Zealand albino rabbits, five days a week for two weeks, follicles scored for keratosis. Its "Polysorbate 80" row reads 0, with no asterisk and outside the asterisked oils section; its "Polysorbate 20" row also reads 0; and its "Sorbitan oleate" row — Span 80, a different molecule — reads 3. Fulton's methods define 0–1 as "not considered significant," and he called the whole survey "not at all definitive." A rabbit-ear reading from 1989, not a measurement on human skin.
- 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) A second rabbit-ear laboratory, six years before Fulton, that openly contradicts him on several materials and says so in print. Cited here for what it does and does not contain: its 32 rows include Polysorbate 20 at 0 (tested at 1% in water) but NO Polysorbate 80 row at all. So it is a second reading of the sibling, not independent corroboration of this material — we found no measurement of Polysorbate 80 itself to check Fulton against.
- Elder RL (ed.). "Final Report on the Safety Assessment of Polysorbates 20, 21, 40, 60, 61, 65, 80, 81, and 85." J Am Coll Toxicol 3(5):1–82 (1984) An expert-panel safety assessment — the 1984 final report, not the 2015 tentative re-review that also circulates — concluding the polysorbates are safe as used in cosmetics. It assesses SAFETY, not comedogenicity, and says nothing about follicular plugging; cited for the chemical identity of Polysorbate 80 and for confirming its widespread cosmetic use, not as evidence for a comedogenic rating. A safety conclusion is not a comedogenicity finding, and we do not use it as one.
- Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. "A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept." J Am Acad Dermatol 54(3):507–512 (2006) A dermatology review of the comedogenicity concept, cited in the limits section and not for any number on this page. It reports finished products testing non-comedogenic despite containing ingredients the rabbit assay had flagged, which is why an isolated-ingredient score cannot be read straight across to a formula. It makes no measurement of Polysorbate 80.
- SpecialChem — Polysorbate 80, INCI ingredient reference A cosmetic-ingredient reference used only for identity and function: that Polysorbate 80 is polyoxyethylene (20) sorbitan monooleate (Tween 80, CAS 9005-65-6), a nonionic surfactant and solubiliser with an HLB near 15. It is a formulation reference, not a study of any kind, and it makes no comedogenicity measurement.
- Mark Skin Expert — Polysorbate 80 ingredient directory A consumer ingredient page, not a measurement, cited for disclosure: it is one of the places a reader will meet a comedogenic rating of 0 for Polysorbate 80. Listed so the reader knows where the number they have already seen comes from, not as independent corroboration of it.
- Simple Skincare Science — "The Fungal Acne Treatment Bible" A widely-cited consumer fungal-acne guide, cited only to locate the caution a reader is likely to meet for Polysorbate 80: it appears on Malassezia (fungal-acne) avoidance lists. That is a community-maintained list about a yeast-driven condition, not a comedogenicity study, and it does not measure pore-clogging. Cited to name the source of a different worry, not to support the rating.
Others in the same family
Emulsifiers 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 emulsifiers as a family ›
Last reviewed 2026-08-12 · How we decide