Is retinyl palmitate safe during pregnancy?

Retinyl palmitate is vitamin A in ester form, which makes it a retinoid, which makes it one of the things every pregnancy list tells you to avoid. Except that the lists name retinol, tretinoin, tazarotene, isotretinoin and adapalene, and none of them names this one. It is in more products than any of them.

By The Truva teamPublished

Answers for 6 life stages7 sources, all linked9 min read

What retinyl palmitate actually is

It is vitamin A with a palmitic acid molecule attached, which is what the word ester means. Your skin cuts that bond and what is left is retinol, which it then converts again to reach the active form. Two conversions rather than one is why it is the gentlest member of the family and also the weakest, and why it turns up in moisturisers and eye creams rather than in things sold as treatments.

That is the whole of the chemistry, and it matters for one reason. A retinoid is not a brand of ingredient, it is a family, and being the mildest member of a family does not remove you from it. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists puts the relationship plainly: topical retinoids are a form of vitamin A and are in the same drug family as isotretinoin, the acne drug with the severe published birth defect record.

ACOG is careful about what follows from that, and the care is worth copying. It says the amount absorbed through skin is low. It then says use is generally recommended to be avoided during pregnancy anyway. Those two sentences sit next to each other on purpose: the caution is not a claim that much of it reaches the fetus, it is a decision taken in the absence of a reason to find out.

The lists tell you to avoid retinoids and then do not name this one

This is the part no other page on this query covers, and it is the reason the question keeps being asked. The American Academy of Dermatology’s pregnancy skin care page carries the list most people are sent to. Its avoid column names retinoids and then names them individually: isotretinoin, tretinoin, tazarotene, and over the counter skin care containing retinol like adapalene.

Retinyl palmitate is not on that list. It is not on the use sparingly list either, which is where salicylic acid above two per cent, benzoyl peroxide, parabens, phthalates, phenol, triclosan and several essential oils sit. It does not appear on the page at all.

Six vitamin A ingredients. Five are named on the American Academy of Dermatology pregnancy avoid list. Retinyl palmitate is not named on it.A table with two columns, ingredient and named by name. Five rows read named: isotretinoin, tretinoin, tazarotene, retinol and adapalene. A heavier rule runs under the fifth row, and below it a sixth row reads retinyl palmitate, not named. A line under the table reads: same family, different answer, because nobody wrote one down.On the AAD’s pregnancy avoid listIngredientNamed by nameIsotretinoinNamedTretinoinNamedTazaroteneNamedRetinolNamedAdapaleneNamedRetinyl palmitateNot namedSame family. Different answer, because nobody wrote one down.
The retinoids the American Academy of Dermatology names on its pregnancy avoid list, and the one it does not. Retinyl palmitate is a vitamin A ester in the same family, and it appears in more products than any other restricted vitamin A form in Truva’s catalogue. The row under the heavier rule is the point: a reader checking a label against that list will not find it there.This diagram is wider than the screen. Drag it sideways to see the rest.

That is not the AAD being wrong. Naming the class and giving examples is how these lists are written, and every pharmacology reading puts retinyl palmitate inside the class. But a person standing in a pharmacy is not performing a pharmacology reading. They are holding a bottle, and the bottle says vitamin A, and they are checking a list that says retinol.

ACOG anticipates exactly this and says so in three words: read labels carefully. It is the most quietly demanding instruction on the page, because it asks a reader to recognise a family member from a name nobody gave them.

The numbers everyone quotes are about a pill

Search for vitamin A and pregnancy and you will find figures quickly. MotherToBaby suggests meeting the recommended dietary allowance and avoiding doses above 10,000 IU per day, and says that taking more than 20,000 IU per day, especially of preformed vitamin A, has been linked in some studies to an increased chance of birth defects.

Those are real numbers from a named body and they are the origin of almost everything written about vitamin A in pregnancy. They are also, every one of them, about swallowing it.

The same fact sheet does not address vitamin A applied to skin anywhere on it. Not to permit it, not to restrict it. The most cited source on vitamin A in pregnancy simply does not answer the question this post is about, and no amount of quoting its numbers turns them into a topical dose.

The published vitamin A numbers, and the route they are aboutTwo routes, one above the other. The upper route is labelled swallowed and is drawn as a capsule with vitamin A in it. Two notes lead off it. The first reads: avoid doses above 10,000 IU a day, because MotherToBaby suggests meeting the recommended dietary allowance and avoiding doses above that in pregnancy. The second reads: more than 20,000 IU a day, especially of preformed vitamin A, has been linked in some studies to an increased chance of birth defects. The lower route is labelled applied to skin and is drawn as a layer of product sitting on a cross section of skin, with a short arrow from the product into the epidermis and no arrow going deeper. Two notes lead off it. The first reads: no figure of any kind, because the same fact sheet does not address vitamin A applied to skin anywhere on it, neither to permit it nor to restrict it. The second reads: what ACOG does say, which is that the amount absorbed through skin is low and that use is generally recommended to be avoided in pregnancy anyway.SwallowedAvoid doses above 10,000 IU a dayMotherToBaby suggests meeting therecommended dietary allowance andavoiding doses above that in pregnancy.More than 20,000 IU a dayEspecially of preformed vitamin A, this hasbeen linked in some studies to an increasedchance of birth defects.Applied to skinNo figure of any kindThe same fact sheet does not addressvitamin A applied to skin anywhere on it.Not to permit it, not to restrict it.What ACOG does sayThe amount of a topical retinoid absorbedthrough skin is low, and use is generallyrecommended to be avoided anyway.
The vitamin A figures everybody quotes, against the route MotherToBaby attached them to. The upper route arrives at two published numbers. The lower one arrives at nothing, because the same fact sheet does not address vitamin A applied to skin anywhere on it, and not because anybody has ruled that route out or in.This diagram is wider than the screen. Drag it sideways to see the rest.

This is worth holding on to, because the two most common things said about retinyl palmitate in pregnancy are opposite and both are unfounded. One is that it is fine because barely any gets through skin, which nobody has measured for this ester in pregnancy. The other is that it causes birth defects, which borrows a swallowed dose and applies it to a moisturiser.

One body does name it, and it is not about pregnancy

The European Union’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety assessed vitamin A in cosmetics and named all three forms in the title of its opinion: retinol, retinyl acetate and retinyl palmitate. It concluded that vitamin A in cosmetics is safe at 0.05 per cent retinol equivalent in body lotion and 0.3 per cent in other leave on and rinse off products.

Those limits are now law in the European Union. In the United States they are not: the FDA’s list of prohibited and restricted cosmetic ingredients is short and contains no form of vitamin A at all. The same moisturiser can be reformulated for one market and sold unchanged in the other.

The same moisturiser under European and United States cosmetics lawOne jar of moisturiser drawn twice, once for each market, with vitamin A in both. Above the first jar a solid rule marks a legal ceiling. A note reads: a legal maximum exists. The Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety names retinyl palmitate and concluded that vitamin A in cosmetics is safe at 0.05 per cent retinol equivalent in body lotion and 0.3 per cent in other leave on and rinse off products, and Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/996 made those limits law. Above the second jar there is no rule at all, only empty space, and a note leads out to it reading: no maximum of any kind. The Food and Drug Administration’s list of prohibited and restricted cosmetic ingredients is short and contains no form of vitamin A, so the same moisturiser can be reformulated for one market and sold unchanged in the other. A line across the bottom reads: neither of these is a pregnancy rule, because the European limit is about total vitamin A exposure across a population.Sold in the European UnionA legal maximum existsThe Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety namesretinyl palmitate and concluded that vitamin A incosmetics is safe at 0.05 per cent retinol equivalentin body lotion and 0.3 per cent in other products.Regulation (EU) 2024/996 made those limits law.Sold in the United StatesNo maximum of any kindThe Food and Drug Administration’s list ofprohibited and restricted cosmetic ingredients isshort and contains no form of vitamin A at all.The same moisturiser can be reformulated for onemarket and sold unchanged in the other.Neither of these is a pregnancy rule. The European limit is abouttotal vitamin A exposure across a population.
The only published rule that names retinyl palmitate by name, and the market that has no equivalent. The European limit comes from the Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety and is law under Commission Regulation (EU) 2024/996. The United States position is the FDA's own list of prohibited and restricted cosmetic ingredients, which is short and contains no form of vitamin A. Neither was written about pregnancy.This diagram is wider than the screen. Drag it sideways to see the rest.

It would be convenient to read the SCCS limit as a pregnancy answer. It is not one. That assessment is about total vitamin A exposure across a population, and the reason for the limit is the intake of vitamin A from all sources rather than a fetal one. It is the only published rule that names this ingredient by name, and it is answering a different question than the reader is asking.

What to actually do with the bottle in your hand

ACOG lists the over the counter acne ingredients that can be used during pregnancy: topical benzoyl peroxide, azelaic acid, topical salicylic acid and glycolic acid. Retinyl palmitate is not among them, and ACOG says what to do about an ingredient that is not on the list. Contact your obstetrician.

That is an unsatisfying answer and it is the correct one, so it is worth saying why rather than dressing it up. Nobody has published a topical vitamin A dose for pregnancy. In the absence of one, the published position is to avoid the class, and the class includes this. Two of the four ingredients on ACOG’s permitted list have their own pages here, if what you actually need is a replacement: azelaic acid, which the catalogue marks clear on all six profiles, and salicylic acid, whose two per cent limit belongs to the AAD and not to ACOG.

On the timing, the AAD’s acne page is more direct than its ingredient list: if you are using a retinoid and find out you are pregnant, the instruction is to stop, not to finish the tube or wait for an appointment. That applies to a class, and the naming gap above is precisely why somebody might not realise it applies to them.

Truva marks retinyl palmitate as one to avoid in pregnancy. That is the site applying the published position on the class to a member of the class that the published lists do not name, which is a judgement and is labelled as one, not a finding anybody has reported.

The other five profiles

The pregnancy answer is the one with published backing behind it. The rest are thinner, and saying which is which is more useful than giving all six the same confident tone.

If you are breastfeeding

No published rule names retinyl palmitate for lactation. What the named bodies say about retinol while breastfeeding is set out in its own post, body by body. What is published is about specific prescription retinoids rather than this ester, so anything said about it here would be the class argument again, one step further from its evidence than it was in pregnancy. Truva marks it a caution while breastfeeding rather than an avoid, and that difference between the two profiles is the site saying the pregnancy case is better supported.

If you are trying to conceive

Nothing is published for this ingredient before conception. The medicines that do carry a published window to stop before conceiving are prescriptions and neither of them is a cream. Any caution here is about the window in which somebody is pregnant without knowing it, which is a timing judgement rather than a finding about the ingredient.

Postpartum, PCOS and general use

No named body publishes anything about retinyl palmitate for any of these three. The one rule that names the ingredient is the European concentration limit above, which applies to everybody and has nothing to do with a life stage. If you are outside pregnancy and breastfeeding, the honest summary is that this is an ordinary cosmetic ingredient with a legal maximum in one major market and none in another.

The short version

Where this came from

Every health claim on this page links to the body that published it. Nothing here comes from another blog.

Show all 7 sources
  • American College of Obstetricians and GynecologistsSkin Conditions During PregnancyThat topical retinoids are a form of vitamin A in the same drug family as isotretinoin, that the amount absorbed through skin is low, and that their use is nevertheless generally recommended to be avoided during pregnancy. Also ACOG's own instruction to read labels carefully, its list of over the counter acne ingredients that can be used, and what it says to do about an ingredient that is not on that list.
  • American Academy of DermatologyPregnancy Skin Care: Ingredients to AvoidThe five retinoids the AAD names by name on its avoid list, isotretinoin, tretinoin, tazarotene, retinol and adapalene, and the fact that retinyl palmitate appears nowhere on the page, on either the avoid list or the use sparingly list.
  • American Academy of DermatologyAcne Treatment During PregnancyThe instruction to stop a retinoid on finding out you are pregnant rather than at the next appointment, which is the reason the naming gap on the other page matters at all.
  • MotherToBaby, Organization of Teratology Information SpecialistsVitamin AThe oral figures the worry about vitamin A is built on: the suggestion to avoid doses above 10,000 IU per day in pregnancy, and that more than 20,000 IU per day of preformed vitamin A has been linked in some studies to an increased chance of birth defects. Also that this fact sheet does not address vitamin A applied to skin at all.
  • Scientific Committee on Consumer Safety, European CommissionRevision of the scientific Opinion (SCCS/1576/16) on Vitamin A (Retinol, Retinyl Acetate, Retinyl Palmitate)That a named scientific body has assessed retinyl palmitate specifically, by name, alongside retinol and retinyl acetate, and concluded that vitamin A in cosmetics is safe at 0.05 per cent retinol equivalent in body lotion and 0.3 per cent for other leave on and rinse off products.
  • European UnionCommission Regulation (EU) 2024/996, restricting vitamin A in cosmetic productsThat the SCCS concentration limits are law in the European Union rather than advice, which is the sharpest available contrast with the position in the United States.
  • U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationProhibited & Restricted Ingredients in CosmeticsThe list of ingredients the FDA restricts or prohibits in cosmetics sold in the United States, which is short and does not include retinyl palmitate or any other form of vitamin A.

Every link above was fetched and confirmed to resolve on .

Truva summarises published guidance from bodies including ACOG, the FDA, the EU SCCS and the Cosmetic Ingredient Review. It has no access to your medical history and it is not a substitute for your doctor, dermatologist or midwife. This post was written by the Truva team from the sources listed above. It has not been reviewed by a clinician, and nothing in it is a diagnosis or a prescription. If you are pregnant, breastfeeding or being treated for PCOS, take the ingredient list to the person looking after you.

The label in your hand, read against your situation.

Truva scans a product and answers for the profile you set: pregnancy, breastfeeding, postpartum, trying to conceive, PCOS, or general use. Every flag names the body it came from, so you can take it to a doctor or midwife rather than take it on trust.

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