Dry air has many effects on body, most notable being electricty

Imagine if you will Christmas morning, you get up early every single year like you always do and you drag your feet across the floor. It’s at that moment that you reach for the door and like a bolt of lightning you hear a zap and you’ve become the victim of static electricity.

Static electricity is defined as the buildup of electrical charges on the surface of some object or material. It is usually created when materials are pulled apart, causing positive charges to collect on one material and negative charges on the other, as evident when we reach for a doorknob and get shocked.

To first understand why this occurs, you must understand that all things in the known universe are made of atoms. Atoms themselves are made up of protons, neutrons, and electrons, which themselves carry a positive, neutral, and negative charge. When these charges are not balanced they become either negative or positive charges, which creates a flow from one atom to another, therefore creating electricity. In essence, our body which is composed of 7*10^27 atoms, is a huge electricity generator.

Electricity is key to survival as our nervous system relies on it for electrical synapses. It’s through electricity that our body can warn us of heat, pain, and cold when our nerves are impacted, but as mentioned it’s also the reason we are shocked.

When many people think of getting shocked they think of the winter, but you can get shocked at anytime during the year. The main reason it occurs more often in the winter is because of the dry nature of the air. In air that is dry, the electrical charges have nowhere to go, so they just build up on an object until the object comes in contact with an object that has the opposite charge. The exact opposite happens in moisture rich air. Humid air has millions of water droplets and water is a natural conductor of electricity. So when the charged materials come in contact with water droplets, the water absorbs the charge. This is why it’s always wise to use a humidifier and increase the moisture in your home, not only for this reason but for health reasons as well.

Studies have shown that dry air has several effects on the body. Those effects include:

– Breathing dry air can be a health hazard, as you are depleting body fluids from your body.

– The evaporation of moisture on your body can cause your skin to become dry and itch.

– Static electricity buildup as mentioned above.

– Your body feels colder because of the lack of moisture in the environment.

So the next time that you shock yourself remember, that you just created an electrical charge, through the very same process that lightning occurs. In fact, the zap that you hear is the rapidly expanding air due to the temperature. The shock has a higher temperature than the surrounding air and that higher temperature causes an expansion of the air and creates that all to familiar zap that you normally hear.

It’s always important to remember that if you sit in your car when filling up with gas, that you touch a metal object when getting out of your vehicle before touching the gas nozzle. It’s through this that you can get rid of any charge that has built up on your body and lower the risk of igniting the gas fumes near your gas tank.