“A few thousand people” get burned up annually at the gas station?
Can I get a source or cite on that, please?
For those of you having difficulties disembarking from your vehicle. Try this:
First, grab the door frame prior to stepping out of the vehicle and hold on until after your feet have established contact with the ground. You will not experience the shock…guaranteed!!!
As for the inside…leather soled shoes, and always touch wood first, such as the door first, then the door knob.
Works every time!!!
I used to suffer from this a lot on offices. I’m going to repeat the ‘hold a metal key’ solution but please read on. I know that no single solution is going to work 100% for everyone, under all circumstances, and the website suggested by bbeauty is a good one. However, don’t be too quick to dismiss the key solution just because a few people here say it didn’t work or not very well. It is an effective solution in nearly all cases.
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You need a key, like an ordinary Yale house key, that is solid steel or solid brass or as close as you can find. Not metal plated. Not coated with anything to give it a nicer finish. Just plain, vanilla naked metal. (I suspect someone will dive in with ‘band name!’ soon.) Carry this with you all the time.
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Approach something that you know often gives you shocks, e.g. the metal parts of the office photocopier. Hold the key in one hand, just as you would if you were going to open a door with it. Touch the other end, the tip, to a metal part of the photocopier. Don’t be timid! Make a good, solid contact. It’s not going to zap you, and you won’t feel a thing. This might seem counter-intuitive, but try it and you’ll see. The key might get a spark or a zap, and you may even be able to see it, but you won’t feel a thing. You don’t need to be doing anything else, or touching anything else with your other hand.
If there was any discharge waiting to happen, it will happen between the tip of the key and the photocopier. You’re done. You can now use the photocopier like any normal person without worry.
Repeat as you approach anything you think is going to zap you.
Not only will this work on a case-by-case basis, but over a period of time you may find the problem has gone away. I did. I figured, very ignorantly and un-scientifically, that after enough times of dong the ‘key zap’ thing I was somehow ‘equated’ with my envirnoment and I didn’t have spare charged electrons all over me trying to earth. But that’s by the by, and not important to the method.
Furthermore, in my capacity as a former sufferer, I suggest you forget all the advice pertaining to what shoes you wear. For a start, every source of ‘shoes’ advice seems to offer contradictory information. Secondly, it’s actually very hard to be certain what stuff your shoes, or soles, are made of these days. Even if someone says “it’s 100% genuibe leather” it probably isn’t, and it has probably has been through all sorts of treatments and sealants and finishes.
I second the advice about if necessary, and you don’t have your trusty key to hand, touch danger points with something other than your fingertip. The back of the hand and the knuckle both worked well for me.
Worth remembering: electricians who are aware they are working with what might be damaged or faulty stuff always touch metallic and electrical parts with the back of the hand first. Reason: if there IS a shock, the muscles in your hand will contract AWAY from the object, whereas if you grip something in the palm of your hand and take a zap the muscles will most likely contract AROUND the object, making the grip even tighter. This is good advice for all of you who mess around with music equipment and microphones. Every year a few more rock star wannabes get a bad burn or worse from a microphone that was ‘live’ in an electrical sense. Always touch the mic and mic stand first with the back of the hand, see it’s okay, and then grip it in the usual manner.
I get the shocks on the car, and I do follow the previous advice and touch the car as I am getting out of it. However, I don’t get the shock right there but once I am out, and I let go, if I touch the car again, I get a shock… grrrrr!
I get shocks all the time from the car. I used to use the key trick, which helped, but now, I just touch the doorframe with the back of my wrist. It’s easier to do and barely hurts at all.
ABOUT SHOE SOLES
For the technically inclined, you can measure whether different shoes cause different amounts of imbalanced charge on your body. Build this little device:
Ridiculously Sensitive Charge Detector
http://amasci.com/emotor/chargdet.html
Sit the device on a table, charge it so the LED is on, then scuff your shoes on a carpet and wave your hand near the device. The voltage on your body turns the LED off and on. If you’re charged strongly, the LED will respond to your hand from a couple of feet. If you’re charged weakly, you’ll almost have to touch the device before it responds.
Other ways to measure “static” on your body:
http://amasci.com/emotor/voltmeas.html
eBay sells Electrostatic Voltmeters: