Options for ridding records of static electricity


I am getting back into vinyl, listening to “garage sale” finds and also new albums that I have been picking up. I have a nice old Linn Sondek LP12 with the felt mat. Every time I go to remove a record from the spindle or flip the record, static electricity grabs the felt mat and it sticks like a magnet. I have to very carefully flip the felt mat at the corner with my finger but one of these times I’m going to slip and smudge or scratch a record. 

I’ve seen the “Milty Zerostat” and seem to remember this product from back in the day. I see that it is still made and there is one eBay vendor that has them for $77. Is this my best bet? I thought Michael Fremor talked about these in one of his videos. 

Are there other products I should look at to reduce static electricity on my records? Thanks for any help you can give.
masi61
I'm keeping up my end just because I am bored (like most of us a prisoner in my own house), and it's fun.  Plus one of my two audio systems is down and that depresses me.  If you arrive at the turntable all charged up with negative electrons (or ions, as some would say), then as soon as you touch the LP, the charge on you will flow to it, owing I guess to the fact that skin wants to give off negative charge, and vinyl loves it.  No rubbing needed.  There is also the issue of removing the LP from its sleeve which also could charge it up.  And the LP rotating in air on the platter is another possible source based on the relative positions of air and vinyl in the triboelectric series. In the actual situation, the interactions are complex enough that one can almost never say the LP is neutral just using empiric reasoning.  Shure found that when they neutralized charge on the playing surface, that did nothing to the charge that might have existed between the LP and the platter mat, on the other side of the neutralized surface.  As soon as the LP was lifted off the mat, the charge on the reverse side redistributed itself to cover both sides.  By the way, I don't think conductivity has much to do with it, since this is, after all, "static" electricity, and we see that the materials on the extreme ends of the Triboelectric table, those with the most vs the least tendency to shed electrons or negative ions, are in general not very conductive or not at all conductive of electric current.
You are entitled to your opinions about the Linn LP12 and about use of the dust cover and the horrors of dust, but you are not entitled to facts.  I am not sure of the facts, but I am interested to learn more without reverting to long held "beliefs" based on nothing discernible. Or you could quote your sources.
This post spurred me to do some further research and I came upon this paper that shows that a water:IPA solution up to 80% H20/20%IPA is capable of removing static charge from an insulator (teflon was tested).   https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/c23f/122eb9436b52a28fc5455674d5a699116578.pdf .  
What single stereo item have I owned The longest and will never part with? My 35 year old zerostat. 
By the way- zapping a record before play 95% of the time results in no lifting of my felt mat
Just a quick follow-up to my post about 80% H20/20%IPA being capable of removing static charge from an insulator.  The reason this works and plain water does not has to do with 'wetting' - the difference between the fluid surface tension and the critical surface tension of the insulator.  The critical surface tension for Teflon is ~19 dynes/cm (~one half of PVC) and  80% H20/20%IPA surface tension is 30 dynes/cm - low enough to 'wet' the Teflon.  Given these results, a 90% H20/10%IPA with surface tension of 40 dynes/cm would be more than adequate to remove static from a PVC record that is ~38 dynes/cm.  Just remember that for water-IPA solutions with >2% IPA - the vapors are flammable.