I seem to have developed a new superpower recently. Everything I touch turns to Zap! And it's driving me bananas. I'm scared to turn on taps, close the car door, touch anything metal really. I've even taken to hooking clothes out of the dryer using a plastic spaghetti spoon!

Anyone else have this problem or is it just me? And any suggestions as to what I can do to stop myself from being a human lightening rod?

I have that really bad here in MN where it is really cold and mostly dry in the winter. Honestly, it got so bad I went and got my hair cut so it wasn't sticking to my face as much.

You sound like you need more moisture in the air (humidifier) and more moisture to yourself (hand lotion might fix that)

TEEEEEEJ

Yeah, Teej is right. Humidity/Moisture absorbs (or something like that) static electricity. So when it's dry and cool outside, there's always a lot more static shocks. I live in Houston where it's pretty humid all year round but we do have those couple of months where humidity is low and man, let me tell you, I always close my car door with my knee around that time.

Never really had a problem with it. Except, for the first time in years, I had a static shock the other day when I patted Homer. Must be his naturally electric personality showing.

LabRat

I'm terrible at it.

I went to a birthday party during the winter a couple of years ago, and everyone I touched got zapped. I have no idea why that happened. I would zap one person and less than a minute later, while saying hello to another person, they got zapped too. The funny thing was that everyone was complaining, asking me to stop it. Gee, if I only knew how... :p

I wonder if being dehydrated contributes to the zapping.

malu

I zapped one of my students today as I was giving him my key so that he could unlock a door and get some stuff inside. It was embarrassing. Oh well.

Ann

Good to know it's not just me. I grew up on the coast so I never experienced this sort of thing until a few years ago, usually around this time. Will try to moisturise more.

I've even made my own motivational poster on the subject.

[img]http://i253.photobucket.com/albums/hh62/jlo-pb/ThePrankster841.jpg?t=1205270930[/img]

LOL gr8! You should put that one in the other thread too! Ha!

Alright, I'm not the only 1

I'm also in Minnesota & this mostly happpens to me in the winter. The mail guy in my office loves to tease me, whenever I sign for a package I end up giving him a shock. I've also given myself really very bad shocks sometimes when I've touched something metal in the office, other people standing by me have even heard it

I agree, gr8shades, put it in the resurrected motivational posters thread

Good luck to all you static electricity sufferers - I usually only have the problem with my hair.

Maybe it's the moisturize-from-within aspect: my family doesn't call me "the bottomless barrel" for nothing

Eva

I don't know what it is about North America, but static seems to be a real problem on this side of the Atlantic. I almost never had static issues when I lived in Ireland or the UK, but now I get them all year round, to the point where I almost want to wrap something around my hand when opening a door when going from outdoors to indoors. It's worse when I wear certain types of shoes.

Even at work, I sometimes get a static shock when I turn off a light-switch.


Wendy

An easy way to prevent static shock is to stop walking, touch a piece of wood (like a door frame or a desk) for about two seconds, then touch the metal doorknob or the other person. The electrical potential you build up by moving across whatever surface you've moving across will bleed off without shocking you when you touch the wood, because wood is a poor conductor of electricity. (It won't prevent the other person from discharging into you, unfortunately.)

I have the same problem as many of you. The absolute humidity is low in this part of the country when it's cold outside. My chair at work sits on a plastic rug protector and sometimes I'd swear that my chair is plugged into the wall. But if I touch the wooden desktop before touching anything metal, I don't have that arc light and sound or the smell of burnt ozone and skin hanging in the air. No pain either.

What you need to watch out for more than anything is at the gas station. The static you build up just getting out of your car can be dangerous when you begin to pump the gas. Make sure to close your car door when you get out and then ground yourself to your car before you take the nozzle to fill up. There have been incidents of customers bursting into flames at the gas pump because of static electricity.

TEEEEEEJ

A couple of days ago, I was having a really bad case of static electricity shock while at work. Everytime I took off and put on my favorite red hoodie sweater, sparks would fly! It would even hurt at times.

To add to the ways to prevent this from happening, if you're like me and tend to build up some kind of charge when in vehicles, if you hold the metal frame of the door while you're exiting, you won't automatically shock yourself the next time you touch metal. Don't ask me why. There's probably some great scientific explanation for it, but all I can say is that it saves me innumerable shocks in the winter months.

I actually prefer it dry to humid, so I'll deal with having to work around the shocks.

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.