Are your skin care ingredients clogging your pores? Below is a list of ingredients to avoid in all skin care, acne care, makeup, and hair products. Do not ever put anything on your skin or your hair without checking the ingredients first, even if it says “Won’t Clog Pores” or “Non- Comedogenic” on the bottle.
Natural oils can be some of the worst offenders, like cocoa butter and coconut oil which are found in many “organic” skin care lines. Other oils such as jojoba, olive, and lanolin are mildly comedogenic and can be a problem if formulated with other comedogenic ingredients. Some prescription products like the cream form of Retin-A have pore cloggers. Many over-the-counter acne medications also have pore clogging ingredients. “Oil-free” products can be comedogenic. |
The real deal on "non-comedogenic" ingredients.
The comedogenic scale is ranked by how likely it is that any specific ingredients used in cosmetic product formulations, will clog pores. Anyone who is susceptible to acne breakouts or acne-prone should highly avoid comedogenic ingredients. As they are likely to have recurring acne problems.
The scale used is a numbering system of 0 to 5. Here’s how the numbers rank on the scale:
0 - won’t clog pores at all
1 - very low likelihood of clogging pores
2 - moderately low likelihood
3 - moderate likelihood
4 - fairly high likelihood
5 - high likelihood of clogging pores
Now for the serious note, SELF magazine interviewed a spokesperson from the FDA about the noncomedogenic labels for cosmetics, and guess what they said? “There are no federal definitions or FDA cosmetic regulations specific to the use of the term ‘noncomedogenic’ on labels for cosmetics.” What is truly frustrating, they ingredients on the noncomedogenic list are "not determined by some FDA database but rather the results from one (or more) of the comedogenicity studies." We are trusting a hopeful honor system with companies and manufacturing laboratories to appropriately label their products, in hopes, they have checked the scale appropriately and are truthful. Not to mention, since the FDA is not performing the direct studies about comedogenic ingredients, we hope that the results from comedogenicity studies are completed by neutral partisans, not the laboratory that created the ingredient.
The scale used is a numbering system of 0 to 5. Here’s how the numbers rank on the scale:
0 - won’t clog pores at all
1 - very low likelihood of clogging pores
2 - moderately low likelihood
3 - moderate likelihood
4 - fairly high likelihood
5 - high likelihood of clogging pores
Now for the serious note, SELF magazine interviewed a spokesperson from the FDA about the noncomedogenic labels for cosmetics, and guess what they said? “There are no federal definitions or FDA cosmetic regulations specific to the use of the term ‘noncomedogenic’ on labels for cosmetics.” What is truly frustrating, they ingredients on the noncomedogenic list are "not determined by some FDA database but rather the results from one (or more) of the comedogenicity studies." We are trusting a hopeful honor system with companies and manufacturing laboratories to appropriately label their products, in hopes, they have checked the scale appropriately and are truthful. Not to mention, since the FDA is not performing the direct studies about comedogenic ingredients, we hope that the results from comedogenicity studies are completed by neutral partisans, not the laboratory that created the ingredient.