Fulton (1989): What the Table Actually Says — and What the Web Copied Wrong
Almost every “pore-clogging ingredients” list online descends from a single 1989 paper. We rebuilt ours from the page images of the original rather than from another website — and found seven places where the copied tables are wrong.
The source
Every rating we label “Fulton 1989” was read directly off Table I (“Ingredients and Their Comedogenicity and Irritancy”) in:
Fulton JE. “Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products.” Journal of the Society of Cosmetic Chemists 40:321–333 (1989). Table I, pp. 324–326.
Why the copied tables are wrong
The paper circulates only as an image-only scan. Its OCR text layer is misaligned: it pairs the wax numbers with the pigment names and drops whole columns. Anyone building a list by copying that text layer — or by copying somebody else’s list — inherits the errors.
When we traced the tables in circulation today, we found only around three independent ancestors. The rest are copies. That distinction matters: they are not independent replications of the experiment, they are retellings of one table. Here, many sources agreeing does not mean a finding is confirmed.
The seven corrections
“Copied value” is the number repeated across the derived lists — and the one we ourselves published before going back to the original. “Printed value” is what Fulton’s Table I actually gives.
What the copied tables say, and what Fulton printed
The 7 ratings we had to correct after reading the page images of Table I.
Grey dot: the value repeated across comedogenic tables online. Coloured dot: the value printed in Fulton (1989), Table I, pp. 324–326. Hexadecyl Alcohol does not appear in Table I at all and was removed from the dataset, so it has no position on this scale; it is in the table below.
Show the numbers
| Ingredient | Copied online | Fulton, Table I |
|---|---|---|
| Acetylated Lanolin | 4 | 0 |
| Wheat Germ Glyceride | 5 | 3 |
| PPG-2 Myristyl Ether Propionate | 4 | 3 |
| Isodecyl Oleate | 4 | 2–3 |
| Propylene Glycol Monostearate | 4 | 0–3 |
| Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil | 2 | 0–2 |
| Hexadecyl Alcohol | 5 | removed |
| Ingredient | Copied | Printed | What went wrong |
|---|---|---|---|
| Acetylated Lanolin | 4 | 0 | The 4 belongs to Acetylated Lanolin ALCOHOL — a different row of the table. Fulton's own text adds that even there the comedogenicity comes from the cetyl acetate additive rather than the lanolin itself. |
| Wheat Germ Glyceride | 5 | 3 | A row-offset error: the 5 belongs to the neighbouring entry. Fulton prints 3. |
| PPG-2 Myristyl Ether Propionate | 4 | 3 | Reproduced tables round this up. The printed value is 3. |
| Isodecyl Oleate | 4 | 2–3 | Fulton printed a range, marked with his asterisk for “results depend on the source of the raw material”. Collapsing it to a single high number discards that caveat. |
| Propylene Glycol Monostearate | 4 | 0–3 | Another printed range flattened into a single value. The low end is 0 — the difference between “avoid this” and “usually fine”. |
| Simmondsia Chinensis (Jojoba) Seed Oil | 2 | 0–2 | Printed as a range. The widely quoted flat 2 is the top of it, not the finding. |
| Hexadecyl Alcohol | 5 | removed | Hexadecyl alcohol and cetyl alcohol are two names for the same molecule, but the derived tables list them separately with 5 and 2 — so one substance returned two opposite answers depending on which name a label used. We keep the cetyl alcohol row. |
What the ratings mean — and don’t
Fulton reads his own scale this way (p. 322): 0–1 is not significant, 2–3 is borderline, 4–5 is positive. The assay is a rabbit-ear model with the ingredient diluted to 10% in propylene glycol — a model the paper itself calls extremely sensitive and not fully predictive of human skin.
The ratings therefore describe the raw ingredient, not the finished product. Concentration, formulation and how far down the ingredient list a substance sits all change how it behaves in practice. Where Fulton printed a range, we show the range — never the high end alone, because variability in the raw material is not evidence that a product clogs pores.
Comedogenicity against irritancy, all 219 ingredients
Fulton rated both properties for every material in Table I. This is the whole table in one grid.
Each cell holds the number of ingredients carrying that pair of scores. Read from Fulton (1989), Table I, pp. 324–326; two entries have no rating and are excluded.
Show the numbers
| Comedogenicity | Irritancy | Ingredients |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | 0 | 85 |
| 1 | 0 | 27 |
| 2 | 0 | 19 |
| 3 | 0 | 15 |
| 3 | 2 | 11 |
| 2 | 2 | 9 |
| 4 | 2 | 6 |
| 2 | 1 | 6 |
| 4 | 0 | 6 |
| 1 | 1 | 5 |
| 4 | 1 | 4 |
| 3 | 1 | 4 |
| 4 | 3 | 3 |
| 0 | 1 | 3 |
| 2 | 3 | 2 |
| 5 | 2 | 2 |
| 0 | 3 | 2 |
| 1 | 2 | 2 |
| 1 | 3 | 1 |
| 5 | 0 | 1 |
| 5 | 3 | 1 |
| 3 | 3 | 1 |
| 2 | 4 | 1 |
| 4 | 4 | 1 |
| 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 5 | 4 | 1 |
Use these corrections freely
Frequently asked questions
Does a high comedogenic rating mean a product will clog my pores?
No. The rating applies to the raw ingredient tested at 10% in propylene glycol on the rabbit ear. A finished product contains that ingredient at a different concentration, in a different base, and often far down the ingredient list. Fulton himself warned the assay is extremely sensitive and not fully predictive of human skin.
Why do the numbers online differ from yours?
Because most tables online are copies of copies — we could trace only around three independent ancestors, not independent replications of the experiment. The original paper circulates as an image-only scan whose OCR layer is misaligned, so errors in the numeric columns were inherited rather than caught.
How did Fulton read his own scale?
On page 322 he describes 0–1 as not significant, 2–3 as borderline and 4–5 as positive. The scale is not linear in practical meaning.
Can I use your corrections?
Yes. These are facts from a published paper and we claim no copyright over them. A link back is appreciated if the corrections are useful to you.
Database rebuilt from the primary source on 2026-07-16.