The mysteries of belly button lint.
I accidentally set myself a challenge to write an interesting and entertaining 500 words on an ordinary and unremarkable topic, so today I bring you the strange but true story of belly button lint.
Belly button lint is a collection of loosely packed fibres in one’s belly button. It is usually blue or blue grey in appearance. For most people, it is a mystery as to how this fluff turns up in one’s navel.
In recent years, some scientists have studied why the belly button accumulates lint and why it is nearly always blue. These scientists appear to be relatively sane, qualified intellectuals. Two of these scientists are Dr Georg Steinhauser, chemist at the Vienna University of technology and Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, an Australian science commentator popular on TV.
Dr Steinhauser, pictured left, spent four years researching belly button lint. FOUR YEARS! He looks pretty thrilled about it too.
After studying hundreds of pieces of lint from his own belly button, and asking his friends about their lint, he published this startling discovery in 2009 - the scaly structure of stomach hairs is responsible for belly button lint production. Yes, that’s right the SCALY STOMACH HAIRS, even on ladies.
Like the picture on the left, our hair is quite scaly. This attracts bits of lint from your clothes during the day and eventually, because belly hair tends to grow in concentric circles, it all ends up in your belly button. In general, the hairier your belly, the more lint you will gather, says Dr Steinhauser.
Fascinating.
But, it turns out that Aussie’s own Dr Kruszelnicki, known popularly as Dr Karl, had figured this out about seven years earlier in 2002, via his belly button lint online survey. The survey asked nearly 5000 people questions about their weight, hairiness, skin type, colour of lint, colour of clothes. It then asked participants to shave their bellies and observe changes in volume of lint. Results — shaved belly, less lint. Also, bigger belly, more lint collection area, more lint.
But what about lint colour? Dr Karl’s team suggested that blue lint was due to the wearing of blue jeans. I’m not a fan of this theory. Plenty of men wear black pants to work every day and most women don’t wear jeans that sit above their belly buttons, aside from the strange fashion phenomenon of high waisted jeans. Ack.
Wikipedia suggests that the blue colour of belly button lint is just the ‘average’ colour of lint all rolled into one. I’m leaning towards this. This is the same colour lint as what you pluck out of your tumble drier filter.
However, here is one avid lint collector, Australian Graham Barker, who smashes the ‘average colour’ theory, with several years worth of red lint. Yes, RED.
In summary, belly button lint is more prevalent in hairy large tummied blokes. Belly hair traps the lint from clothes and deposits it towards the belly button. To reduce it, if it bothers you, get out the daisy shaver. Then, instead of a small bobble of fluff in your belly button, you’ll have a bald spot on your stomach. Sexy. Also, high waisted jeans are horrible. That is all.
