This guide is intended for use by product manufacturers' internal or third-party electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) test laboratories that perform ESD immunity tests on products. It is intended to supplement and complement test methods commonly used for demonstrating compliance with ESD requirements such as IEC 61000-4-2. For completeness, the test methods and parameters described herein reference that ESD standard. The complementary test methods provided herein extend the application of ESD testing and can serve as a resource in the development of ESD test plans. This extension of testing requires more time than that needed to perform tests to international ESD standards such as IEC 61000-4-2. The payoff is that this additional ESD investigation is expected to significantly reduce the number of customer complaints by revealing responses that are not found with the usual ESD testing prescribed in existing international standards. This guide also recommends test criteria for applying ESD events and for evaluating equipment exposure and responses to ESD. The actual test levels and acceptable performance depend on criteria set by the equipment manufacturer, which might be based on customer ESD performance experience with the product and the risk of failure in a wide variety of product use environments in which ESD events have different probabilities of occurrence.