Can pure cotton clothing replace anti-static clothing on a production line?
Most clothing is insulating or has insulating properties (depending on the amount of sweat, thickness, fabric, number of layers, etc.). Charge does not move on an insulator; it remains on the insulator and neutralizes after a certain time (usually hours or days) or with ions in the air (this time can be reduced to less than a few seconds with manual intervention). Therefore, your sleeves, belts, etc., may carry several thousand volts of voltage (the electric field it generates is very strong for surrounding conductors), which may induce charges on nearby isolated conductors. Therefore, workers need to wear anti-static work clothes to shield the insulating clothing and minimize the static field generated by the clothing. It is important to tuck your sleeves into your work clothes.
During normal production activities, the clothing worn by operators, the external environment, the layers of clothing, and even the soles of shoes on the ground, will become charged due to frequent contact, separation, and friction. This charging is especially amplified when wearing highly insulating synthetic fiber fabrics. The static charge locally carried on clothing and shoes gradually dissipates across the entire surface according to the law of charge dissipation on a dielectric medium, forming a certain static voltage on the clothing when equilibrium is reached. Since the human body is a good conductor, the charge on clothing can cause the skin to become charged due to electrostatic induction, also forming a certain static voltage. Therefore, for operators, standard anti-static clothing styles present two possible discharge paths. It is generally believed that wearing pure cotton work clothes can prevent the accumulation of static electricity in anti-static clothing, thus ensuring safety; however, this view is one-sided. The charge carried by cotton fabrics can even be higher than that of some synthetic fiber fabrics, so in dry climates, one cannot expect to eliminate the static hazards of anti-static clothing with pure cotton products under all circumstances. One type of discharge is between the fingertips and a grounded conductor; the other is between the work clothes and a grounded conductor. Both types of discharge can damage static-sensitive devices. While anti-static measures can eliminate the first type of discharge hazard, they cannot eliminate the second.
Typically, people only focus on eliminating static electricity from the skin, neglecting or not paying enough attention to eliminating static electricity from antistatic clothing. This needs to be strictly improved in order to effectively prevent the harmful effects of static discharge from the human body! Therefore, we must take effective protective measures with the antistatic clothing we wear.