With everything going on in Chicago such as, floods, corrupt politicians ands pastors being shot to death by crazy lyme disease ridden citizens, The Chicago Tribune always stays on top of things with ground breaking news coverage:

Found: The source of … belly-button lint
Vienna chemist says hairs around navel pull fibers, other matter in

—Rex W. Huppke
March 9, 2009

A chemist in Vienna has taken the term “navel gazing” to its logical extreme and guaranteed himself a curious epitaph: Unraveler of the mysteries of belly-button lint.

Georg Steinhauser discovered that there is a certain type of body hair responsible for directing lint into the navel. The researcher spent three years studying 503 pieces of schmutz from his own belly button, then published his conclusions in the journal Medical Hypotheses under the title, “The nature of navel fluff.”

Among other gems, the article notes: “Accordingly, and to the author’s personal experience, navel lint seems to be a phenomenon that affects primarily male adults.”

Steinhauser found that hairs around the belly button have a scaly structure that pulls fibers from clothing and then directs those fibers—along with dead skin, fat, sweat and dust—into the belly button.