A Static Electricity Disease?
1997 W. Beaty

Some people report that they cannot own cellphones or wear watches. They zap every doorknob they touch, even during humid summers. If they touch the pins of a fluorescent tube, the tube flashes. Even their incandescent bulbs at home have unusually short lives. If you hand them your iPad or cellphone, there will be trouble!

What could cause this "Electric Human" problem? First, shoe sole material and clothing need to be eliminated as possible causes. Maybe you aren't an "electric human" at all. Maybe you simply have electric shoes! As you walk across carpet, you typically leave behind positive-charged footprints. Your body becomes more and more negatively charged. But if finger-sparks are always a problem, regardless of wearing less insulating clothing (cotton,) and regardless of various shoe soles (leather, metal foil, etc.), regardless of humid weather, then perhaps the problem isn't from "frictional" charging, and it's something mysterious.

Besides "contact electrification" or "frictional" methods, in order to create a static electric imbalance on our bodies, we'd have to be sending out electrically-charged matter. If this occurs, then our bodies would take on an equal-opposite charge. In order to occur, some part of our bodies would have to function as an Electrostatic Generator. Perhaps the skin does this somehow? Or maybe the membranes of our lungs can somehow emit air molecules or tiny particles which are electrically non-neutral?

Droplets via bursting microbubbles

For example, if I were to constantly breathe out negative ions (charged air molecules), then, unless my body was electrically grounded to the earth, I'd rapidly accumulate a strong positive imbalance on my body. This imbalance would be equal and opposite to the charged air I breathed out. If I breathed out negatives, my body would become positive. But why would my lungs produce electrified air? One possibility is described by AG Bailey and diagrammed on the cover of his book on electrospray: whenever films of water turn into droplets, whenever microscopic bubbles burst, the natural surface-charge of the water will give a positive charge to the resulting spray. What happens if the liquid on the inner surface of alveoli in our lungs should be full of bursting micro-bubbles? Then our lungs might become VandeGraaff generators, and our exhaled air would become the charge-transport "belt" of the generator.

Another possibility: certain viruses escape from cells NOT by bursting the cell, but instead by growing long nanofilaments. Smallpox does this. Could such virii push through the gas/liquid interface? They'd dry out, snap off, and be carried away by moving air. At the microscopic scale, most surfaces and particles have a strong natural charge. If charged bits are being launched from damp surfaces, it's like the Kelvin's Thunderstorm generator, but with no metal parts needed.

If you acquire a contagious disease communicated by air because the microbes launch "spores" from your lungs, those spores might carry enough of a natural electric charge that they'll stick to any surfaces that they encounter (such as other nearby humans.) They'd leave an opposite electrostatic charge on the lungs and body which launched them. Disease evolution might favor such an odd capability. For example, in order to produce contagion, the cold virus discovered the "sneeze," so perhaps another virus discovered the benefits of lung-voltage!

In other words, the "electric human syndrome" might be caused by viruses; it might be an actual disease that you could catch from another "electric human." Flu viruses make you cough, and the "electricity disease" makes you spew out virus-laden air with each breath. It makes your lungs start manufacturing thousands of invisible charged droplets, and the annoyance of the electric body-charging would just be a side-effect. Hmmmm, maybe those highly charged 1930 prisoners mentioned in RA Ford's book "Homemade Lightning" didn't actually have Botulin poisoning, maybe they had some other ...unique... illness.

NEW 2011: In the germ-warfare book "Demon in the Freezer, author Richard Preston tells a story of a smallpox incident in a hospital, where several staff members were infected. They worked in the floor above an isolated smallpox patient. The patient was secretly smoking cigarettes and blowing the smoke out a window. The air was carried up the side of the warm building and into open windows on the floor above. Smallpox is communicated directly by air! But is coughing required? Or can the viruses somehow make the leap into the air from lung surfaces? Preston mentions that doctors say the source of smallpox is a spot at the back of the throat. (I wonder how they know this?) The deciding test: if any population still had smallpox, the victims could be tested by breathing into a particle counter (the sort used for air quality in cleanrooms.) Evaporation does not produce aerosols, and there's no clear reason that human lungs should produce large particle counts. If their lungs generate particles without any coughing, that's a mystery. If their lungs generate large particle counts only when they're infected, that's a discovery!

NEW 2009!
I received this message in my Unusual Phenomena Reports section:

I come from Zambia and up to age 41 I experienced nothing of a static shock. At 41 I spent winter in Namibia and experienced this for the first time. I am now 46 and just spent my 3rd winter in Namibia and I experience shocks quite often, once or twice a week. Today I learned from Internet articles that here in Namibia this is commoner because the air is very dry, compared to my native country, Zambia. Easy explanation why I only experienced shocks so late in life. But here is my puzzle. This was the reason I searched the Internet today. I have failed to find anything useful on the Web on this. I am just recovering from the worst flu in my life (We are in spring). Began last Sabbath. On the second and third day of symptoms my body was really hot. And alas, those days and the next four days of my illness I have had a shock almost each time a touched a door, fridge or wall. Literally tens of times a day. Another difference: all previous shocks were only felt. But many of the ones during this illness were vissible sparks. IS THERE ANY CONNECTION BETWEEN FEVER AND BODY ELECTROSTATIC CHARGING? - CG Windhoek, Namibia - Saturday, September 05, 2009 at 09:54:05 (PDT)

LINKS:

Lungs as VandeGraaff Electrostatic Generator

• Flu virus in exhaled breath, 2008
• Droplet size, healthy subjects 1997
• Surfactants increase human exhaled bio-aerosols2004
• Climet CI7300 optical particle counter
• Simple tests for high body-voltage
• Electrostatic anomalies