What Is Benzyl Alcohol?

The Cosmetic Ingredient Review panel says its 1998 final safety assessment concluded that benzyl alcohol, benzoic acid and sodium benzoate are safe for use in cosmetics at up to 5%, but that the data were insufficient to support their safety in products where the primary route of exposure is inhalation. At its June 2011 meeting, the panel concluded that newly available inhalation toxicity data and the safety test data already available support the safety of benzyl alcohol and related benzoates, and issued a tentative amended final report stating that benzyl alcohol, benzoic acid and its salts, and benzyl benzoate are safe in the present practices of use and concentration.

The CDC describes benzyl alcohol, used in a head lice treatment, as an aromatic alcohol that kills lice but does not kill eggs, so treatment is repeated after 7 days to kill newly hatched lice before they can produce new eggs. It says its safety for people over 60 years is unknown and that it can irritate skin. A 2026 case report in Contact Dermatitis describes a patient whose dermatitis went into complete remission after she identified benzyl alcohol in the moist toilet paper she had used habitually.