The readers may not be interested any longer
Oh, at least I am.
Re the "popping" chips, I have seen many cases of ESD ruined chips, but never any outside visible evidence. I do thus think that you get something else into your board. What I would do as a first measure (diagnostic or fix) would be to make the entire cable and themocouple float i.e. have no connection to ground at the measuring point, but only at the data collector board. In the olden days when I did big equipment I had a case of a unit that "popped" about once a year. I finally discovered that the reason was that an electrician had connected the lightning arrestor to computer ground.

Erik