What is Hydrogenated Castor Oil?
Hydrogenated Castor Oil is a structural wax. Castor oil with its double bonds saturated, converting the liquid oil into a hard, brittle wax used to structure balms, sticks and mascaras. It is named on the AcneClinicNYC pore-clogging ingredient list, but that list does not publish a 0-5 comedogenic score for it and no Fulton-derived table we cite carries one. We therefore leave it unrated rather than invent a number — treat the listing itself as the signal.
You may see it on labels as Hydrogenated Castor Oil, Castor Wax, Hco, so it can hide under more than one name in an ingredient list.
Where Hydrogenated Castor Oil shows up
You'll most often find Hydrogenated Castor Oil in balms, lipsticks, mascaras, and stick products, where it adds structure.
Is Hydrogenated Castor Oil bad for acne-prone skin?
Because no reliable comedogenic score exists for Hydrogenated Castor Oil, judge it by how your own skin responds rather than by a number.
Worth flagging: Hydrogenated Castor Oil's rating is disputed. Credible sources land on different numbers, which is why we show a range rather than a single score — and why your own experience is the best tiebreaker.
Note for fungal-acne (malassezia) sufferers: Hydrogenated Castor Oil is commonly avoided in fungal-acne routines, since it falls into the fatty-acid or ester families the yeast can feed on. The evidence there is looser than for comedogenicity — see our fungal-acne checker for context.