One of the books I picked up on faultfinding and troubleshooting whilst in London the other day (title escapes me but I can find it if anyone cares) states that:
a) A bipolar transitor may be permanently damaged by dropping it on a concrete floor from a height of over 4'. (I'm paraphrasing but that's the gist of it).
Elsewhere it states that:
b) static sensitive components can be damaged by careless use of air dusters, which can build up a static charge, in their vicinity.
Whilst I'm prepared to place some faith in assertion b) I'm reluctant to do so in the case of a). However, I'm more concerned with b) because I recently purchased a fair sized air compressor for blowing dust out of the insides of test equipment which is of course considerably more powerful than the aerosol cans the author was thinking about when he asserted b). Has anyone ever caused damage to static-sensitive components through the use of compressed air? Is this something we really need to be mindful of?