once upon a time in computer land, people had computer labs with wool carpets, and they wore polyurethane sole shoes and polyester clothing, and they did have many incidents of destroying components via the inevitable static discharge when they picked up said item and then moved the item towards the earthed computer chassis.
two things help, don't install items into an earthed pc case and two, if you ever get static shocks in a given environment, before you pick up electronic items such as these, first touch the case to make sure you won't make the item the conduit for your discharge. euww, icky!
