A toe grounder is a specific type of shoe grounder that uses conductive black carbon to ground the shoe.

Materials like wood and wool are also insulating. Walking up and down a wool carpet with tennis shoes can easily cause us to hold static on our skin and clothes.

When we go to handle electronics we want to make sure we are not electrically isolated, but instead electrically bonded (also known as “being grounded”). This allows those static electrons to discharge from our clothes and skin to the ground beneath our feet. Wearing a toe grounder connected to an electrically bonded floor or floor mat is a common way to “ground” large assembly lines.

The bonded surface can be a coated floor, an anti static mat roll laid out as “floor runner”, or a workstation floor mat.

The way this works is that as the toe grounders make contact with electrically bonded surfaces (mats or floors) the electricity that was static on your shoes and skin is dissipated- literally falls into the Earth under the force of gravity.