The Science Behind Belly Button Lint

I blame the dress clothes or maybe it’s the change in altitude, but for some reason, I now produce a pretty impressive amount of belly button lint.

Otherwise known as navel lint or navel “fluff,” but only weirdoes call it that.

Anyway, I went to the source of all knowledge (Wikipedia) looking for some answers. And here is what I found.

Little was known about belly button lint until 2001 when Dr. Karl Kruszelnicki studied the phenomenon at the University of Sydney — once again proving that university researchers are worth every dime we spend on them. It turns out that Dr. Karl is the Bill Nye the Science Guy of Australia.

He discovered that the substance is a mixture of stray clothing fibers, dead skin cells and some body hair. Men are more likely to collect lint than women and the older you are the more likely that your belly button is overflowing with lint.

The lint appears to migrate up from underwear rather than down from shirts because of the frictional drag of body hair. It is most likely to be blue-gray because that is the averaging of clothing fibers, though some special people have been known to produce reddish lint. Just a guess, but that is probably the sign of the devil.

Here is my favorite line from the Wikipedia entry: “The existence of navel lint is entirely harmless and requires no corrective action.”

I’m not sure that is entirely true and I’ve done the math to prove it. If hairy men are the prime lint producers and older hairy men are the kings of lint, I should be suffocated by my own belly button lint by the time I’m 64.