Porecelain

Flawless skin starts with the fine print.

Talc

Talc is rated Clear, and for once the number behind that is easy to trace. Fulton's 1989 rabbit-ear survey prints it at 1 on a 0–5 scale, among the powders and thickeners, on the not-significant side of his own published line. That is one measurement, in one paper, from one laboratory, on a rabbit. It is also the only exact-talc comedogenicity result we can find in the primary inventories we hold.

Clear Low confidence Legacy score 1 on a 0-5 scale · Fulton 1989 · low reliability

Mineral filler used in powders; low comedogenic risk.

What it is

A mined mineral. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review's 2015 assessment defines the cosmetic ingredient (CAS 14807-96-6) as a powdered native hydrous magnesium silicate, sometimes containing a small portion of aluminium silicate, and gives the mineral formula as Mg3Si4O10(OH)2 with a theoretical composition by weight of 31.7% magnesium oxide, 63.5% silicon dioxide and 4.8% water. Structurally it is a sheet silicate: octahedrally coordinated magnesium hydroxide groups sandwiched between two tetrahedral silica layers, with the resulting triple-sheet stacks held together by van der Waals forces. CIR lists its reported cosmetic functions as abrasive, absorbent, anticaking agent, bulking agent, opacifying agent, skin protectant and slip modifier. On a label it is simply Talc.

Why we rate it Clear

We rate it Clear at Low confidence. Low, because the whole evidence base is one rabbit-ear assay from 1989 — that is the tier that gets Low here regardless of which way it points. The number, and where it sits. We read Fulton's 1989 paper in the Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists rather than a list quoting it. Table I is divided into numbered sections, and talc sits among the powders and thickeners, between Kaolin and PVP. The row reads a comedogenicity grade of 1 on a 0–5 scale. It carries no asterisk and no range: it is a flat 1. That is worth saying explicitly, because the asterisk on section VI, "Oils*" — Fulton's footnote "Results depend on source of raw material" — is attached to that section's heading and does not reach talc's row. Then Fulton's own grade key, which almost nobody quotes alongside his numbers: "a minimal grade of 0 to 1 is not considered significant. Grade 2 to 3 is borderline. However, a grade of 4 to 5 is uniformally reproduceable and considered positive." A 1 falls on the not-significant side of the author's own line. The neighbouring rows put that 1 in proportion: bentonite 0, kaolin 0, magnesium aluminum silicate 0, PVP 0, carbomer 940 1. Talc and carbomer 940 are the two rows in that cluster scored above zero, and both are scored 1. What a second document does not add. Fulton's own earlier paper, Fulton, Pay and Fulton 1984, ran the same model on a 0–5 scale over cosmetics and ingredients, and it has no talc row at all; its nearest entries are kaolin and hectorite, both 1, both diluted under that paper's own footnote. Morris and Kwan 1983, the independent rabbit-ear assay published six years before Fulton 1989, has no talc row either, and Nguyen, Dang and Maibach's 2007 rabbit-ear study names its fourteen test materials in its abstract, with talc not among them. We have found no other document that assigns talc a comedogenic score. So the 1 is real, traceable and small, and it is also alone.

What the evidence doesn’t tell you

One paper, one laboratory, one animal model — and the author's own warnings about it. Fulton wrote that the disadvantage of the rabbit ear is "its extreme sensitivity", that "not everything that irritates this model will also irritate human skin", and that the survey was "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research". Those cautions cut against a reassuring 1 exactly as hard as they cut against anybody's alarming 4. A low score from a test the author called non-definitive is a low score from a test the author called non-definitive. We identified no human comedogenicity study of talc. And a 1 for "talc" is a 1 for one unspecified historical grade. Fulton records no geological source, no mineralogy, no particle size or morphology, no purity, no surface treatment and no asbestos status for the material he tested. Talc is a mined mineral whose behaviour can vary with all of those, and the row fixes none of them. The vehicle is a genuine hole, and it is Fulton's own finding rather than our speculation. He mixed ingredients at roughly 10% in propylene glycol, chosen because it "gradually evaporates and leaves a concentrate of the raw material to be tested". He then demonstrated, in the same paper, that the vehicle moves the score: D&C red #36 graded 3 in mineral oil, 2 in pentaerythrital tetra capra/caprylate, 1 in propylene glycol and 0 in PEG 400 — one pigment, four numbers. And his own sentence about powders is the one that matters here: "A dry compressed powder or powder suspended in an evaporating vehicle such as propylene glycol may be noncomedogenic. The same dye incorporated into a nonevaporating oil can be comedogenic." Talc was tested in the evaporating vehicle. What talc does suspended in a non-evaporating oil or a pressed binder is not something this paper measured. A score for talc is also not a score for a powder. Draelos and DiNardo, in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology's Current Issues and Opinion section in 2006, tested finished products on small human upper-back panels and found products testing non-comedogenic despite containing ingredients the rabbit assay had called comedogenic. Its methods are paywalled and we have not read them, so we will not describe it any further than that. The general point runs in both directions: a formula can behave unlike its parts either way, and nothing on this page says a talc-containing product cannot break someone out. Finally, the question a reader is most likely to be carrying, which is not this one. The live controversy about talc is asbestos and cancer, not pores. In July 2024 the International Agency for Research on Cancer classified talc as probably carcinogenic to humans, Group 2A, on the basis of limited evidence for cancer in humans — ovarian cancer, largely from studies of self-reported perineal body-powder use — together with sufficient evidence in experimental animals and strong mechanistic evidence. IARC also stated that a causal role could not be fully established, that contamination of talc with asbestos could not be excluded in most of the human studies, and that reporting biases could not be ruled out with reasonable confidence. Separately, the Cosmetic Ingredient Review concluded in 2015 that talc is safe in the present practices of use and concentration, having deliberately relied only on data for talc without detectable asbestos, and attached one restriction that is theirs rather than ours: talc should not be applied to the skin when the epidermal barrier is missing or significantly disrupted. None of that is a comedone finding, in either direction. We record it because a reader searching this ingredient will have met it, and because a safety conclusion is not evidence about pores.

Where you’ll see it

CIR's 2015 assessment reports talc in 3469 cosmetic formulations at concentrations from 0.0005% to 100%, and says it is used in "almost every category of cosmetic product". The split is 3287 leave-on uses at 0.002% to 100% and 163 rinse-off uses at 0.0005% to 70%; a 2012 industry survey put the highest reported spray concentration at 35%, in an aerosol makeup base. Some cosmetic products, CIR notes, are composed entirely of talc. Two caveats on those numbers, because they are the kind that get quoted as though they were current. They come from the FDA's Voluntary Cosmetic Registration Program as of 2013 and from industry surveys run in 2009 and 2012 — over a decade old, from a programme that was voluntary, and not a market survey. And the familiar places to meet talc — pressed and loose powders, blushers and eyeshadows, foundations, body powders — are illustrative categories rather than a measured breakdown. We have not audited which of those 3469 uses fall where. On a label it is Talc.

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. Fulton JE. "Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products." J Soc Cosmet Chem 40:321–333 (1989) The primary document, and the only source we have found that assigns talc a comedogenic score. Read in full from the journal text rather than through a list quoting it. Method as printed — ingredients mixed in propylene glycol at a 9-to-1 dilution (10%), a colony of New Zealand albino rabbits, three rabbits per assay, 1 ml applied once daily to the entire inner surface of one ear five days a week for two weeks, the opposite untreated ear serving as control, and follicular keratosis judged both visually and microscopically with a micrometer. Talc appears in Table I among the powders and thickeners, at a comedogenicity grade of 1, with no asterisk and no range. Fulton's grade key is on p. 322. It is also a document that undercuts itself in useful ways — he calls the model's extreme sensitivity its disadvantage, notes that "not everything that irritates this model will also irritate human skin", and closes by calling the survey "not at all definitive but simply designed to stimulate research". A single-investigator rabbit survey, not a clinical trial and not a human result.
  2. Fulton JE Jr, Pay SR, Fulton JE III. "Comedogenicity of current therapeutic products, cosmetics, and ingredients in the rabbit ear." J Am Acad Dermatol 10(1):96–105 (1984) The same author's earlier rabbit-ear paper, read in full from a print copy, and cited here strictly for what it does NOT contain: there is no talc row in it. Its nearest entries are kaolin and hectorite, both 1, both marked as diluted in mineral oil or carried in a 10% alcohol gel under that paper's own footnote. Note also that its grade key differs from the 1989 one — in 1984, 1 to 2 is not significant and 3 or above is positive — so its numbers may not be read across to the 1989 table without carrying each paper's key. Relevant here only as evidence that the 1989 measurement stands alone.
  3. 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, from a different laboratory, six years before Fulton 1989 — the paper that would count as corroboration if it had tested this material. It did not. Its 32 rows cover lanolins, vegetable oils, esters and surfactants, and contain no talc. Cited for the same reason as the 1984 paper: the absence is the finding.
  4. 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-canal study on a 0–4 scale — a third scale, and one easy to misread as Fulton's. Its abstract names all fourteen test materials, which are esters, fatty alcohols, hydrocarbons, one butter and one surfactant; talc is not among them. Cited for that absence: the most recent rabbit assay we hold does not test this mineral either.
  5. Cosmetic Ingredient Review (Fiume MM, Boyer I, Bergfeld WF, Belsito DV, et al.). "Safety Assessment of Talc as Used in Cosmetics." Int J Toxicol 34(1 Suppl):66S–129S (2015), published online 30 July 2015 An expert-panel SAFETY assessment, published in final form in a peer-reviewed toxicology journal, and the source of every composition, definition and use figure on this page. It is not a comedogenicity study and we do not use it as one — it reports no comedone data for talc. Its conclusion is that talc is safe in the present practices of use and concentration, with the restriction that it should not be applied where the epidermal barrier is missing or significantly disrupted. Its safety reasoning rests on data for talc containing no detectable fibrous asbestos minerals, which the Panel states is what industry specifications require of cosmetic-grade talc; that scoping decision is disclosed in its own abstract and should be read alongside the IARC evaluation below. Safety is not comedogenicity, and a safe rating is not a pore finding.
  6. International Agency for Research on Cancer. Press Release No. 352, "IARC Monographs evaluate the carcinogenicity of talc and acrylonitrile" (5 July 2024), summarising IARC Monographs Volume 136; summary article Stayner L, Carreón-Valencia T, Demers P, et al., "Carcinogenicity of talc and acrylonitrile", Lancet Oncol (2024) A cancer HAZARD identification, cited on a comedogenicity page only to keep two questions apart. Read carefully as to document state: we read Press Release No. 352 in full. IARC Monographs Volume 136 has since been published, and we have still read only the press release — not the volume and not the Lancet Oncology article — so nothing here reports the monograph's own conclusions. The press release records the Group 2A classification, and equally records its own limits — limited evidence in humans, drawn largely from self-reported perineal body-powder use, with a causal role not fully established, asbestos contamination not excludable in most human studies, and reporting bias not ruled out. IARC also notes that its classifications indicate strength of evidence, not level of risk. It says nothing whatever about follicles.
  7. acne.org — "What Is Comedogenicity, and What Ingredients Are Comedogenic? The Full Story" A secondary summary, and where many readers will have met a mineral verdict. Characterised precisely rather than dismissed: it does not simply reprint one table — it walks through eleven comedogenicity studies with citations, and it says plainly that rabbit-ear results do not necessarily transfer to humans. What it prints about this cluster is a paraphrase, not a quote: "Mineral materials generally were non-comedogenic. They include clays, bentonite, kaolin, talc, iron oxide, chromium hydroxide, and titanium dioxide." We cannot match that sentence to anything printed in the copy of Fulton 1989 we hold, and it gathers into one line pigments and powders that sit in different parts of his table. It is the summary's own wording, and a reader tracing the claim should treat it as such rather than as Fulton's.
  8. Draelos ZD, DiNardo JC. "A re-evaluation of the comedogenicity concept." J Am Acad Dermatol 54:507–512 (2006) A Current Issues and Opinion piece that tested FINISHED PRODUCTS on small human upper-back panels and found products testing non-comedogenic despite containing ingredients the rabbit assay had called comedogenic. Cited narrowly, for the single point that an ingredient's assay result does not transfer to the formula it ends up in. It is not a human re-test of talc, it is not a head-to-head validation of the rabbit ear against human skin, and its methods are paywalled and unread by us.

Others in the same family

Minerals & pigments 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 minerals & pigments as a family ›

Last reviewed 2026-08-12 · How we decide

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