So It would seem I need to do a few things before moving onto my next stage of cold research: 1. whatever experiment I perform needs to be properly shielded and performed in the dark, and 2) in general I need to think about replacing a few CFL's with incandescents... oh wait... I can't buy them any more.... curse you obama!
What a detective story! Congratulations!
But it's not your president's fault that incandescent ligth bulbs are so inefficient as they are. Perhaps you should jump the step and go directly to DC powered LEDs with the power supply either far away or powered from batteries.
Colleagues of mine recently had problems with 12 V halogen light bulbs in their measurement setups. The measurements (on wafer-level MOSFETs) would be performed in the dark inside a Faraday cage, but in order to position the sample there were halogen lights installed. Never before had this been a problem, but then my colleagues complained that something was wrong with the measurement setup: for every single transistor the gate would blow after the first measurement.
Then they consulted me.
By accident and with the involuntary help of another colleague we tracked down the problem to the halogen lights!
In one setup the 240 V/12 V 50 W transformer for the halogen light bulb, including the power cord had been installed inside the Faraday cage
But it was not enough to get the transformer out of the cage - no, even when the transformer (made in the 1980s in Eastern Germany) was connected to a wall outlet on the other side of the room we could consistently blow the MOSFET gates inside the Faraday cage just by switching on or off the transformer - no lamp attached
It proved to be spikes which through power line and protective earth and through the semiconductor parameter analyzer found their way to the gate of the MOSFETs.
The other setup guided the light through a fiber-optic cable into the Faraday cage - but the problem was similar and most probably the same cause.
Since two months now both setups are equipped with 3 W LED lights, powered with linear regulated constant current sources from old-style transformer wall warts. The transformer is never switched - switching of the light is done by slowly ramping the current down and up.
As far as I know not a single MOSFET gate has been destroyed since...