Ingredient ratings / Petrolatum

Is Vaseline (petroleum jelly) comedogenic? What the tests found

By Skinredients · Checked against the sources 2026-10-16

Label name

Petrolatum

Also listed as

petroleum jelly, white petrolatum, yellow petrolatum, white soft paraffin, yellow soft paraffin, soft paraffin

Comedogenic grade

negative (no 0–5 grade) · Not significant (0) or negative

Tests

• Nguyen, Dang & Maibach 2007: negative (no grade) — rabbit ear, not stated in abstract
• Kligman 1996: negative (no grade) — human face (acne patients), highly refined petrolatum, whole face twice daily for 8 weeks (10 acne patients)
• Kligman 1996: negative (no grade) — human face (acne patients), 30% petrolatum aqueous cream, whole face twice daily for 8 weeks (10 acne patients)
• Kligman 1996: negative (no grade) — rabbit ear (revised assay), 5 commercial samples incl. white and yellow petrolatum, revised 3-week assay (concentration not stated)

What the tests found

Petrolatum has no 0–5 grade on this site, because the studies that tested it reported a yes/no outcome rather than a score. Two of them reported negative results.

Kligman 1996: a human face study. Kligman set out to test whether petrolatum, which had earlier been reported as comedogenic in rabbit ears, would make acne worse [1].

• Participants: two groups of 10 paid volunteers, 6 men and 4 women in each, average age about 18. Each had moderate acne lasting at least two years, with at least 10 papules or pustules and 15 comedones.
• Treatment: one group used Vaseline Petroleum Jelly, described as a highly refined petrolatum. The other used an aqueous cream containing 30% petrolatum. Both were applied to the whole face twice daily for eight weeks, in unmarked jars, during winter.
• Measurement: a dermatologist counted lesions. Microcomedones, the earliest stage of a clogged pore, were measured with cyanoacrylate “follicular biopsies” from the forehead.
• Result: comedones and microcomedones fell slightly in both groups, though not significantly. Papules and pustules fell significantly (p < 0.05). Nobody got worse [1].

Kligman 1996: a revised rabbit test. In the same paper, Kligman retested petrolatum with an updated rabbit-ear method. The application site was moved to just outside the ear canal, the untreated ear was biopsied as a control, and dosing was extended from two weeks to three. None of five samples from different producers, yellow and white petrolatum included, was comedogenic [1].

Nguyen, Dang & Maibach 2007. This rabbit-ear study screened 14 cosmetic materials. The abstract names nine as positive, and petrolatum was not one of them [2].

Petrolatum does not appear in Fulton’s widely copied 1989 table [3]. Older “petrolatum is comedogenic” claims trace back to the original rabbit-ear work instead.

Why older tests disagreed

Kligman was a co-author of the 1972 “acne cosmetica” study. That study, using the original rabbit-ear model, found petrolatums and mineral oils from different sources uniformly comedogenic. In 1996 he called those results false positives [1]. He gave two reasons:

• The test material was placed inside the ear canal, where loose horny material normally collects in the follicles and can look like comedones.
• The untreated ear was not biopsied for comparison.

The same paper adds two caveats that cut the other way:

• Grade matters. A crude “red veterinarian petrolatum”, used as a sunscreen in World War II, was strongly comedogenic in the revised assay [1].
• “Vaseline” is not always Vaseline. Kligman bought “Vaseline” at six pharmacies. Three of the products were greases of unknown composition from unfamiliar manufacturers, and all three were comedogenic in the revised rabbit model. He notes that an earlier report on pomade acne had implicated Vaseline among other grooming greases, and concludes that the source has to be checked in any report blaming Vaseline [1].

Where the evidence is weaker

• Small and uncontrolled. Twenty people in two arms, with no untreated or placebo group. Lesions improving under any non-medicated vehicle is common. Kligman himself says that in vehicle-controlled acne trials, the vehicle’s effect often approaches that of the active drug [1].
• One investigator. Both the human and the revised rabbit results come from Kligman’s paper, and some supporting points are labeled “unpublished observations” [1].
• The Nguyen result is abstract-only. The concentration and the details of the grading aren’t available from the abstract [2].

Where it shows up, and how much

• As an OTC skin protectant: the FDA monograph for over-the-counter skin protectant drugs lists petrolatum at 30 to 100 percent as an active ingredient [4]. An over-the-counter protectant that names petrolatum as its active ingredient therefore contains at least 30%.
• In creams: the cream tested by Kligman was an aqueous emulsion with 30% petrolatum [1].
• Neat: plain petroleum jelly is the undiluted material, and that is the form Kligman’s first group put on their faces [1].

No ingredient-safety survey of petrolatum use by cosmetic product category was found to cite here, so this page gives no category-by-category concentration figures.

If you want to avoid it

The published evidence on refined petrolatum is negative. The concern Kligman documents is crude or unidentified grease sold under the name, which an ingredient list cannot reveal. For a similar occlusive role, these have published results in this dataset:

• Paraffin: negative (Nguyen 2007) [2]
• Ceresin: 0 (Fulton 1989) [3]
• Dimethicone: 1 (Fulton 1989) [3]
• Mineral oil: 0–2 (Fulton 1989), marked as dependent on the raw-material source [3]

Sources

1. Kligman AM. Petrolatum is not comedogenic in rabbits or humans: a critical reappraisal of the rabbit ear assay and the concept of “acne cosmetica”. J Soc Cosmet Chem. 1996;47(1):41-48. https://library.scconline.org/v047n01/44
2. Nguyen SH, Dang TP, Maibach HI. Comedogenicity in rabbit: some cosmetic ingredients/vehicles. Cutan Ocul Toxicol. 2007;26(4):287-292. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18058303/
3. Fulton JE Jr. Comedogenicity and irritancy of commonly used ingredients in skin care products. J Soc Cosmet Chem. 1989;40(6):321-333. https://library.scconline.org/v040n06/13
4. 21 CFR 347.10, Skin protectant active ingredients, paragraph (m) (2025 edition). https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CFR-2025-title21-vol5/xml/CFR-2025-title21-vol5-sec347-10.xml

Comedogenic grades describe single raw materials tested in a lab, usually on rabbit ears. They are a guide for acne-prone skin, not a prediction for any product or person, and this page is not medical advice. How the scale works.