Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Eye Boogers

We all deal with eye crust, sleep sand, or eye boogers on a daily basic, yet somehow they rarely come up in conversation. Now MSNBC has consulted with the eye goo experts to answer all of your burning questions.

“The general consensus is that this debris is the stuff leftover from dried out tears,” says Dr. Sherleen Chen of the Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary in Boston. At night you aren’t blinking and your eyes are closed, so tears can’t flush out dirt and debris as they do when you’re awake. Instead the crud collects in corner of your eye and grosses you out in the morning. The consistency is determined by how wet or dry your eyes are. Crumbly clumps are more likely to form if your eye are dry. If you have allergies and watery eyes, you can expect more gooey gunk in your eyes.