It's surprising that static voltage on your body goes into thousands of volts, isn't it? I was once part of an "ESD safety" training excercise, where they had a static metre. Someone stood in front of it and rubbed their feet on the floor... even with static dissipative shoes, they had a voltage of about 4000v. With just socks, it went over 10,000v. This is hundreds of times more than the chips are designed to handle, so there's some more specifics
For removing dust... Airbrush/compressed air is fine. Just be careful to not turn the can upside down, as that releases freezing cold, liquid gas. Keep it upright, and spray it a little bit outside the case first, to make sure it hasn't been used upside down recently.
Try not to use a vacuum cleaner, as they have been known to cause static, and its quite a lot harder to turn it off if you find you've just sucked up a capacitor! (rare, i know. but it can happen!)