Trying to explain earthing with atoms

My ungrounded feet in rubber boots.

This week the Washington Post has an article headlined "Could walking barefoot on grass improve your health? Some science suggests it can."  The link itself is subtitled: The science behind grounding.

The article gets a lot of things right about atoms (they make up everthing!), but it confuses "free-radicals" with positive ions. (Free radicals don't have to be charged.) Then it tries to explain why negative ions can help. And while it is true that a positive ion and a negative ion can react in some circumstance to produce a neutral compound (think of hydroxide and hydrogen ions reacting to make water in an acid base reaction), random negative ions won't necessarily disarm a free radical.  You need an antioxidant for that, a molecule that can participate in a reaction that can soak up extra electrons.  You still need to eat your vegetable and wear sunscreen.

Negative ions and positive ions co-exist quite nicely in your body. You need those positively charged potassium ions, in fact, to keep your heart beating rhythmically. So on its face, the "science behind grounding" given in the article is bunk. If all those negative ions in the ground started neutralizing all the positive ions in our bodies, we'd be dead.

While I get this is a not a science news piece, but a perspective piece (a "[d]iscussion of news topics with a point of view, including narratives by individuals regarding their own experiences"), I wish someone at the Post had fact-checked the science.  Yes, it feels nice to walk barefoot on the grass, or to be outside.  I'm pretty certain the negative ions aren't the reason why.