Electrical breakdown due to a charge Electrical breakdown occurs due to the fact that the magnitude of electric field of a charged object is above the electrical breakdown limit of the insulator that surrounds the charged object. Moreover, it can be said that the magnitude of electric field of a charged object at a point is inversely proportional to the distance between that point and the charged object. Since the magnitude of electric field of a point charge, $q$ at a point whose distance from the point charge is $d$ is;
$$
|E|=\frac {q}{4\pi \epsilon_0 d}
$$
And to find the magnitude of the electric field of a charged object, we can add electric fields created by each charge on the object, which can be done by integration according to the shape, volume etc. of that object. But that won't change the basic principle that magnitude of electric field is inversely proportional to the distance. Thus, we can say that magnitude of the electric field created by a charged object increases as the distance decreases.
So then if we decrease the distance between the point and the charged object to an infinitesimal value the magnitude of electric field will eventually surpass the value of electrical breakdown limit independent to the amount of charge on the object. Here is where I got confused. Does every statically charged object's electric field surpass the electrical breakdown limit of the insuator surrounding it and ionize the insulator? Because even the amount of charge is really small, at a microlength its electric field's magnitude would pass the insulator's electrical breakdown limit.
P.S: I know about corona discharge but as long as I know corona discharge occurs at sharp sides of a charged object. However, according to my question ionization of insulator would be everywhere near the charged object.
 A: You neither have arbitrarily small distances or arbitrarily point-like charges: Usually, even "localized" charges are distributed over an entire ion, and any other molecule cannot come arbitrarily close (without becoming absorbed and hence part of the surface, acting as a buffer to other surrounding material).
What matters in practice is not if an individual charge gets removed, but if the field is strong enough to cause dielectric breakdown: Once an atom or molecule of your isolator gets ionized, can it gain enough energy to ionize one of its neighbours simply by being accelerated in the field? If so, a large current can flow and remove your entire charge distribution. Otherwise, only individual charges will constitute a small leakage current that might not do much soon to the total charge of a macroscopically sized charged object.
A: The wikipedia article on Paschen's law should answer your question quite well.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paschen%27s_law
Basically the breakdown field strength increases at smaller distances. That's why, when you "glue" two pieces of plastic foil together with static charge, you can easily get around 30 MV/m or more in the microscopic air gap that's in between the two foils. Which makes the foils stick together with a much greater force than would otherwise be possible.
