Whiskers can cause short circuits and arcing in electrical equipment.  The phenomenon was discovered by telephone companies in the late 1940s and it was later found that the addition of lead to tin solder provided mitigation. The European Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive (RoHS), which took effect on July 1, 2006, restricted the use of lead in various types of electronic and electrical equipment. This has driven the use of lead-free alloys with a focus on preventing whisker formation . Others have focused on the development of oxygen-barrier coatings to prevent whisker formation.
Airborne zinc whiskers have been responsible for increased system failure rates in computer server rooms. Zinc whiskers grow from galvanized (electroplated) metal surfaces at a rate of up to a millimeter per year with a diameter of a few micrometers. Whiskers can form on the underside of zinc electroplated floor tiles on raised floors. These whiskers can then become airborne within the floor plenum when the tiles are disturbed, usually during maintenance. Whiskers can be small enough to pass through air filters and can settle inside equipment, resulting in short circuits and system failure.
Tin whiskers do not have to be airborne to damage equipment, as they are typically already growing directly in the environment where they can produce short circuits, i.e., the electronic equipment itself. At frequencies above 6 GHz or in fast digital circuits, tin whiskers can act like miniature antennas, affecting the circuit impedance and causing reflections. In computer disk drives they can break off and cause head crashes or bearing failures.  Tin whiskers often cause failures in relays and have been found upon examination of failed relays in nuclear power facilities. Pacemakers have been recalled due to tin whiskers. Research has also identified a particular failure mode for tin whiskers in vacuum (such as in space), where in high-power components a short-circuiting tin whisker is ionized into a plasma that is capable of conducting hundreds of amperes of current, massively increasing the damaging effect of the short circuit.  The possible increase in the use of pure tin in electronics due to the RoHS directive drove JEDEC and IPC to release a tin whisker acceptance testing standard and mitigation practices guideline intended to help manufacturers reduce the risk of tin whiskers in lead-free products.
Silver whiskers often appear in conjunction with a layer of silver sulfide, which forms on the surface of silver electrical contacts operating in an atmosphere rich in hydrogen sulfide and high humidity. Such atmospheres can exist in sewage treatment plants and paper mills.
Whiskers over 20 µm in length were observed on gold-plated surfaces and noted in a 2003 NASA internal memorandum.
The effects of metal whiskering were chronicled on History Channels program Engineering Disasters' 19.