How to TEST ESD SHOES
The standard requires that shoes be worn by a human while testing. The shoe's electrical resistance passes through the sole of the shoe, rather than just on the surface..

It is wrong to test unworn shoes with a surface tester.

An example of a proper test system includes a human being wearing the footwear on a tester such as an Elme SVR-SR2 or E3 tester.

North American companies typically follow standards by ESDA S20.20-2007 and/or IEC 61340-5-1 (Rev 2007).

ESDA S20.20-2007 can be downloaded from www.esda.org. (See 8.2 Personnel Grounding within ESDA Standard S20.20-2007)

For standing operations, personnel shall be grounded via a wrist strap system or by a flooring footwear system.

When a flooring-footwear system is used, one of the two following conditions shall be met:

A. When the total resistance of the system (from the person, through the footwear and flooring to the grounding / equipotential bonding system) is less than 3.5 x 10⁷ ohms, Method 1 shall be followed (see Table 2).

B. When the total resistance of the system (from the person, through the footwear and flooring to the grounding / equipotential bonding system) is greater than 3.5 x 10⁷ ohms and less than 1 x 10⁹ ohms, Method 2 shall be followed (see Table 2).