I have been wearing a lot of long john tops lately and have noticed that my belly button always has lint in it and it got me thinking, how the heck does the lint get into my belly button?
I am assuming that the friction between the shirt and my body creates the lint. Ok, I get that. But how does it get pushed into a little ball in my belly button? Why doesn’t the lint just fall out the bottom of my shirt if it is untucked or gather along my waisteline if it the shirt is tucked in?
The hair on my stomach does point to my belly button. Does this mean the hair carries the lint to its designated disposal site? Does this mean that the lint created below my belly button is carried by the hair up to the belly button?
If I didn’t have hair on my body, would I still get lint in my belly button? If I had a huge beer belly, would the lint still find it ways to its designated resting place even though the trip would take much longer?
Is my belly button a black hole that only sucks in lint? Is this a new law of physics that needs to be studied? If I did not take the lint out, would the black hole eventually suck the lint into my body?
I looked online for answers and of course wikipedia has a page on this. Warning, if you want to read the article you are going to see a very large picture of a stomach with green lint in it – not pleasant! Below is a snippet from the article on a research study done at University of Australia:
- Navel lint consists primarily of stray fibers from one’s clothing, mixed with some dead skin cells and strands of body hair.
- Contrary to expectations, navel lint appears to migrate upwards from underwear rather than downwards from shirts or tops. The migration process is the result of the frictional drag of body hair on underwear, which drags stray fibers up into the navel.
- Women experience less navel lint because of their finer and shorter body hairs. Conversely, older men experience it more because of their coarser and more numerous hairs.
- Navel lint’s characteristic blue-gray tint is likely the averaging of the colors of fibers present in clothing; the same color as clothes dryer lint.
- The existence of navel lint is entirely harmless, and requires no corrective action.
I am not sure I wanted to know the results of this study. The lint comes from underwear and not the shirt! Does this mean I need to go commando? And I guess I have to look forward to more lint as I get older. Yeah!!!!!