I'm not stating that it can't happen, but I think people tend to be overly cautious about these things.
The first electrical job I ever had was repairing monitors and PCB components. The first thing you notice on day one, is that everyone is wearing anti-static wrist bands, earthed to the desk. but if you ask 'em why, they don't fully understand, but often say "it's the build up of static from the human body, it will zap the chip if we don't wear it". I later read that today's (This was in 1995) Microchips are built to be protected from ESD, but the problem is bigger, we shouldn't call it "static," we should call it "charge imbalance". Just having charged particles is not enough to damage a chip, but Anti-Static wrist bands are worn as a belt braces style approach. Like an insurance policy.
I think because earlier microchips were probably more susceptible, the human brain can't move on, and trust that ESD is perhaps a thing of the past. It's the same with compressing files on a disk, within windows, everyone is like "Don't do that, the machine will run like a dog". Yes, that's is probably correct, if running on a Pentium 75, but with today's technology and i5 or i7 CPU's and Solid state drives, that's complete BS!
