Not usually, but I can strongly recommend not touching anything made of metal while you are vacuuming up carpet underlay that has crumbled to powder - the powdered rubber going up the tube of the vacuum cleaner acts like the belt of a van de graaf generator and can give you a nasty shock.
And no, I have no idea why all of my stories involve vacuum cleaners...
Re static, anyone who has ever had a cochlear implant to alleviate deafness needs to be VERY careful - for some reason the implanted electronics are very sensitive to static, and surgery is needed to replace them if they burn out.
