FreeLists / si-list / [SI-LIST] ESD, shoes, and hospitals...

["Zabinski, Patrick" <zabinski.patrick@xxxxxxxx>]

A recent article [1] states a Swedish hospital might ban
Crocs shoes (all-plastic clogs) to avoid static interference.
They do not cite any specific failures or severe problems
with static charge, but they're concerned enough to
consider banning these particular shoes.

This article caught the attention of a few folks here, and
we thought about running some experiments to see how bad of
a problem we have in our hospital environments, but we're
not exactly sure of what experiments we should/could run
to determine if we have a problem, how bad of a problem we
have, and what shoe types are of most concern.

Got any ideas? =20

Are there some simple tests we can run that measure static
buildup (in Volts) on people wearing different footwear?  Is there a
simple way of characterizing the relative performance of
different footwear (e.g., ability to build charge more
than other shoes)?

We have thousands of pieces of medical equipment that might
be susceptible to static electricity.  Any ideas how we
can non-destructively test the equipment?

Thanks,
Pat Zabinski




[1] We believe the original article was published in
The Local (http://www.thelocal.se/).  A copy can be
found at http://www.wcsh6.com/printfullstory.aspx?storyid=3D58243.
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