Sorbitol
Sorbitol is rated Clear. The single primary score identified in this audit is Fulton's 1989 rabbit-ear grade of 0 on a 0–5 scale, printed under the ingredient's own name — and the more useful thing on his page is what sits beneath it, because the sorbitan esters made from sorbitol occupy their own rows and do not all read 0.
Fulton 1989 rabbit ear 0 of 5; no second assay we can find.
What it is
Sorbitol is a sugar alcohol. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review's 2019 assessment of the sorbitan esters describes it in passing as "a crystalline, hexahydric alcohol" — six carbons, six hydroxyl groups, water-soluble. The CIR's own 2025 assessment of mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol reports that these ingredients "function as humectants, skin-conditioning agents, or flavoring agents," and concluded that the sugar alcohols were safe in cosmetics at the practices of use described in that report. Humectant is the function that puts it in skincare: it holds water in a formula. One point of naming is worth fixing before anything else, because the rest of this page turns on it. SORBITOL and SORBITAN are not the same word and not the same ingredient. The CIR states the relationship plainly: "Sorbitan" is a generic name for anhydrides "derived from sorbitol by the removal of 1 molecule of water with concomitant cyclization," and sorbitan esters "are manufactured by combining sorbitol with the appropriate fatty acid at elevated temperatures." So Sorbitan Oleate, Sorbitan Stearate, Sorbitan Laurate and the polysorbates all begin as sorbitol and none of them is sorbitol. They are separate declarations on a label, and — as below — they are separate rows, with separate numbers, in the one table that gave sorbitol its number.
Why we rate it Clear
We rate sorbitol Clear at Low confidence, and the confidence is low for the ordinary reason on this site: one rabbit-ear reading, and nothing beside it. The material identity is clean, which is rarer here than it should be. James Fulton's 1989 survey in the Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists is the source of nearly every comedogenic number in circulation, and we read its Table I off a render of the journal scan rather than off a list quoting it. It prints a row reading "Sorbitol" at a comedogenicity grade of 0 on his 0–5 scale. The name in the paper is the name on the label — no derivative, no fraction, no dropped word, and no asterisk or range attached to the row. That is worth stating because it is not the usual finding: coconut oil's famous number belongs to coconut butter. Sorbitol's is sorbitol's. What the 0 is worth is a separate question. On Fulton's own published key, a grade of 0 to 1 "is not considered significant"; 2 to 3 is "borderline"; 4 to 5 is "considered positive." A 0 is therefore the bottom of a band its author treated as noise rather than as a finding — which is the most a single rabbit-ear reading can be, in either direction. Fulton described the whole survey as "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research," and this site discounts his 4s on exactly those grounds. Consistency requires discounting his 0s the same way. We identified no second reading. Morris and Kwan's 1983 assay — a different laboratory on the same 0–5 scale, the paper that contradicts Fulton in print elsewhere — has 32 rows and no sorbitol among them. Fulton, Pay and Fulton's earlier 1984 rabbit-ear paper, on its own 0–5 scale with a different key, prints no sorbitol row either. Nguyen, Dang and Maibach's 2007 rabbit-ear study, on a 0–4 scale, does not name it among its fourteen test materials. So "Clear" here does not rest on two labs agreeing. It rests on one low number from one animal assay, and on nothing pointing the other way. The part of Fulton's table that is actually useful to a reader is the eight rows underneath. Taking them in the order the table prints them: Sorbitol 0, Sorbitan laurate 1–2*, Sorbitan sesquinoleate 0–1*, Sorbitan oleate 3, Sorbitan stearate 0, Sorbitan isostearate 1–2*, PEG 40 sorbitan laurate 0, Polysorbate 20 0, Polysorbate 80 0. The asterisk is Fulton's, and it is defined once in the paper as "results depend on source of raw material." Sorbitan oleate's 3 sits in the band he called borderline; three of the rows carry his asterisk; sorbitol's row carries neither. These are materials that share a starting compound and a root word, and the table gives them different numbers. Reading sorbitol's 0 across to any of them, or any of theirs back to sorbitol, is the substitution this site exists to catch.
What the evidence doesn’t tell you
Everything above rests on a rabbit's ear. Three New Zealand albino rabbits, the ingredient at roughly 10% in propylene glycol applied to the inner ear five days a week for two weeks, follicles then scored for keratosis under a micrometer. That is not a human face, not a finished formula, and not the exposure a cosmetic gives. Draelos and DiNardo's 2006 re-evaluation in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology concluded that isolated rabbit-ear ingredient scores are a poor guide to what finished products do on human skin. Those objections apply to a reassuring zero as hard as to an alarming four. We identified no human comedogenicity study of sorbitol — no trial that counted comedones on human skin after it was applied. The Clear rating is an inference from one low animal score and the absence of any signal against it, not a positive human result. Fulton records no supplier, grade or purity for the material behind any row, sorbitol's included, and no concentration beyond the roughly 10% dilution his method used throughout. So "Sorbitol" in that table is the name he wrote down, and nothing more precise than that is recoverable from the paper. The CIR's 2025 assessment of mannitol, sorbitol and xylitol is cited here only for what the material is and what it does in a formula. We read its abstract and were not able to open the full report, so we make no claim about what its body does or does not contain on this subject — and in any case a safety assessment answers a different question. Safe as used is not the same finding as non-comedogenic, and we are not going to use one to stand in for the other. A rating is a property of an ingredient, not of a product. A formula containing sorbitol can still break someone out; the 0 belongs to the humectant, and what any particular product does is a question this page does not answer.
Where you’ll see it
On a label it reads simply Sorbitol. The CIR reports its cosmetic functions as humectant, skin-conditioning agent and flavouring agent, which is the honest limit of what we can say about where it turns up — we have not audited the market, and we are not going to infer a dose from where a name sits in an ingredient list. The thing worth carrying away is the neighbouring names. Sorbitan Oleate, Sorbitan Stearate, Sorbitan Laurate, Sorbitan Isostearate, Polysorbate 20 and Polysorbate 80 are separate ingredients and separate declarations, each with its own row in the same 1989 table and its own number, running from 0 to 3. If a checker hands you a figure for something that begins "Sorbit-", the last syllable is the part that decides which number it belongs to.
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 source of the only comedogenicity score we identified for this ingredient, and the origin of nearly every comedogenic number in circulation. Read off a render of the journal scan rather than through a list quoting it. 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 scored under a micrometer, graded 0–5. Its Table I prints "Sorbitol" at 0, with no asterisk and no range, and prints the sorbitan esters and polysorbates on their own separate rows nearby — Sorbitan oleate 3, Sorbitan laurate 1–2*, Sorbitan sesquinoleate 0–1*, Sorbitan stearate 0, Sorbitan isostearate 1–2*, PEG 40 sorbitan laurate 0, Polysorbate 20 0, Polysorbate 80 0. Fulton's asterisk is defined in the paper as "results depend on source of raw material," and his grade key reads 0–1 "not considered significant," 2–3 "borderline," 4–5 "considered positive." It is a rabbit-ear assay, not a human study, and Fulton called the survey "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research."
- Fiume MM, Bergfeld WF, Belsito DV, et al. "Safety Assessment of Sorbitan Esters as Used in Cosmetics." Int J Toxicol 38(2 Suppl):60S–80S (2019) A Cosmetic Ingredient Review expert-panel SAFETY assessment of 20 sorbitan esters, published as a peer-reviewed article in September 2019 — a settled publication, not a comment-stage draft. Cited for one thing only, which it states directly and which no comedogenicity paper does — what sorbitol is and how the sorbitan esters relate to it. Verbatim: "Sorbitan" is a generic name for anhydrides "derived from sorbitol by the removal of 1 molecule of water with concomitant cyclization"; "Sorbitan esters are manufactured by combining sorbitol with the appropriate fatty acid at elevated temperatures"; and "Sorbitol, the compound from which the hexitol anhydrides of the sorbitan esters are derived, is a crystalline, hexahydric alcohol." It is a safety review, not a comedogenicity study, and we are not using it as one.
- Cherian P, Bergfeld WF, Belsito DV, et al. "Safety Assessment of Mannitol, Sorbitol, and Xylitol as Used in Cosmetics." Int J Toxicol 44(1 Suppl):22S–43S (2025); PMID 39555956 A Cosmetic Ingredient Review expert-panel SAFETY assessment covering sorbitol itself, published February 2025 in a peer-reviewed supplement. We read the published abstract; we were not able to open the full report, so nothing here is claimed about its body. The abstract reports that these ingredients "function as humectants, skin-conditioning agents, or flavoring agents" and that the Panel "concluded that these sugar alcohol ingredients are safe in cosmetics in the present practices of use and concentration described in the safety assessment." Cited only for what sorbitol is and what it does in a formula. Safety and comedogenicity are different questions and a conclusion about the first is not evidence about the second.
- 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) An independent primary rabbit-ear assay on the same 0–5 scale, six years before Fulton 1989 and in a different laboratory — the paper that openly contradicts him elsewhere in print. Cited here for a verified absence: its 32 rows cover lanolins, vegetable oils, esters and surfactants, and sorbitol is not among them. It offers no second reading in either direction. Its one adjacent row is Polysorbate 20 at 1% aqueous, graded 0 — a different ingredient from sorbitol, and noted here only so it is not mistaken for one.
- Nguyen SH, Dang TP, Maibach HI. "Comedogenicity in rabbit — some cosmetic ingredients/vehicles." Cutan Ocul Toxicol 26(4):287–292 (2007) A later rabbit-ear study on a 0–4 scale — a third scale, easily misread as Fulton's. Its abstract names all fourteen test materials. Cited for a verified absence: sorbitol is not one of them.
- Banish, "The Ultimate List of Pore Clogging Ingredients To Avoid" (list dated 7 April 2026) A current commercial avoid-list published by an acne skincare brand, cited as one of the places a reader will actually meet this number rather than as evidence. It lists Sorbitol at 0. We checked its sorbitol/sorbitan block against our own transcription of Fulton's Table I and the values agree row for row — but where Fulton prints Sorbitan laurate and Sorbitan sesquinoleate with his asterisk, meaning "results depend on source of raw material," this list prints the numbers without it. That is an observation about what the two documents contain, not a traced citation chain — we did not establish who took what from whom. It is a marketing page for a product line, it gives no method, and it is not an independent measurement.
Others in the same family
Humectants 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 humectants as a family ›
Last reviewed 2026-08-20 · How we decide