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"Earthing" is a kind of trend where people walk around barefoot claiming that they achieve a neutral charge by being in direct contact with ground with no insulator in between. What are the physical principles involved here? Some specific questions to guide answers:

  • Is the human body even conductive enough such that coming into contact with earth will have a real impact? Maybe putting my foot on the ground just makes a local area on my foot equilibriate with ground. Maybe that is nothing compared to the islands of charge that dance around my body all the time.

  • Where would charge tend to hang around on the human body if there is such a place? Surface of the skin? Equilibriated throughout?

  • This post is about the earth being slightly negatively charged on the surface. So I suppose "equilibrium" means that the human body naturally has a slightly negative charge?

  • Are conventional urban surfaces even conductive enough? Or conversely, are there so many conducting things in our environment that we can be "grounded" just by touching things during our day to day?

  • Are conventional urban surfaces likely to have the same charge everywhere to within some small margin of the supposed "optimum" for a "human charge"?

  • I know this is getting a little into biology but, so what if we carry some charge? Does it have any known impact?

Alexander Soare
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    There are no valid physical principles behind "human earthing" as a means of improving one's health or sense of well-being. It belongs in the realm of human psychology, not physics. – niels nielsen Jun 22 '20 at 17:31
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    I am going to guess that the friction inherent in walking barefoot is always accompanied by an electrostatic charge build-up, which will be in excess of any supposed excess charge being conducted out of the body. –  Jun 22 '20 at 17:49
  • @nielsnielsen I think a good answer would talk about the physical principles involved and also comment on how they support or contradict human grounding. Your point that most of us (including myself) think the latter, is noted. – Alexander Soare Jun 22 '20 at 18:01
  • today I am tired, and the full explanation will be a long one. this time I will leave it to someone with a bit more energy to furnish it. -Niels – niels nielsen Jun 22 '20 at 19:42
  • Re, "Where would charge tend to hang around on the human body...?" Like charges repel one another. If we can assume a spherical human, then the charge should be evenly distributed on the surface. – Solomon Slow Jun 22 '20 at 20:29
  • I think that if we could develop any meaningful charge by walk using isolant shoes, sometimes we would feel a shock by touching things, or taking out the shoes. But it doesn't happen. – Claudio Saspinski Jun 23 '20 at 02:16
  • @solomonslow the reason I asked that is because I don't know how conductive humans are and whether that's homogeneous – Alexander Soare Jun 23 '20 at 06:13
  • @nielsnielsen I think this is a non-trivial question even for a physicist (like me for instance). If you have a good answer I'd love to hear it – Alexander Soare Jun 23 '20 at 06:17

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