However, when such a discharge is allowed to occur at the ear lobe area, the sensitivity is much greater. Better carpet from an antistatic point of view is needed when personnel are wearing telephone headsets. The best carpet for the reduction of charges is conductive. This means that the carpet is made with conductive fibers allowing it to discharge static charges from the shoes of personnel. Our labs have tested UTP carpets in very low humidities with insulative shoes and found that they provide a very low static generation for call center environments.
Personnel add considerably to their electrostatic charging by the shoes they wear.
Leather soled shoes are usually better than shoes with rubber soles. However, when conductive carpet is used with conductive footwear such as heel grounders or ESD shoes, the voltage on a person is kept below 100 volts. ESD Shoes may be acquired from Iron Age shoes. When most normal shoes are worn, conductive carpets generally keep the voltage on personnel below 1,500 volts which is well below the perception of pain during a discharge. In the electronics industry where computer chips may be sensitive to a few volts, the chairs are conductive and have grounding mechanisms.