Anti-fatigue mats like the one pictured here—The Invigorator—aren’t your ordinary door mats just made longer. If you’re new to the concept of anti-fatigue mats, you’re in for a nice surprise; especially if you work a job that requires you to be on your feet for hours on end, and you often [always] end up with sore, tired feet, joints, and back.

Unlike regular rubber mats, floor mats, or welcome mats, anti-fatigue mats—made in varying designs and alternate functions, such as non-slip or anti-static mats—are manufactured with the effects of gravity on the human body in mind. When you stand in one place, or work within a confined space, with hard floors, especially concrete, the stress and strain of your body weight begins to take its toll on your lower back, knees, ankles, and of course your feet.

Anti-fatigue mats are made to absorb body weight into the foam, thus providing a buffer against the hardness of the floor; less pain, reduced fatigue, and improved performance are the result.

Not all anti-fatigue mats are created equal.   You certainly wouldn’t purchase anti-static mats for use in an industrial or commercial environment where there’s an inherently wet characteristic, now would you?  Well, of course not.   But isn’t it great there are anti-fatigue mats that are also anti-static for when you work in an environment with sensitive, electronic equipment or highly combustible chemicals?

We humans are electric by nature.  Our bodies produce static currents easily just by walking about, or even rolling across the floor on caster wheels in a chair.  If we were to touch sensitive equipment such as computers with microchips, or materials or chemicals easily ignited by the tiniest of sparks, it could result in catastrophe.  Conductive anti-static mats that use a grounding cord are just the thing for such environments.

Most of the time when we think of anti-fatigue mats, we normally picture heavy-duty, thick, non-slip rubberized mats with either holes to capture moisture, or some sort of foam variation designed to reduce pain and fatigue in the feet, ankles, legs and backs of employees in an either industrial setting (like a postal worker at a station for hours on end) or perhaps in a commercial environment.  But did you know there are grounded, electro-static discharge anti-fatigue mats for use around computers or other sensitive electronics that can be damaged by static discharge by a workers touch?

These mats are called anti-static mats, and can protect expensive computer equipment from being damaged by static electricity; these mats, similar to more common anti-fatigue mats, should not be used beneath machinery or computer equipment, but immediately in front so as to absorb the static discharge when the individual steps onto the mat, just before touching the [sensitive] equipment.