I worked for 13 years as a service technician. One of the things I repaired was sewing machines. We used an air compressor with a nozzle to monitor pressure, to clean out most machines. For the hook area, when there was thread and lint massed up in there I used a very sharp pencil. The graphite helped to lubricate it and the lead was sharp enough to get out the lint, thread, etc. while being soft enough to break before it would scratch.
Today, I am retired and use canned air on my own machine and on others that I will work on for friends.
Just use common sense and you will not have any problems using it. I have never had it cause the lint to get stuck tighter.