What explodes out of a lamp going up will have limited
safety issues to the set - just to the people below. Less the hot glass than the glass itself in falling in large enough chunks as opposed to small pieces that would shower out of it. Yep, you could get injured by other than weather tight
fixture in shower of glass, but not so much as a large chunk of it falling and cutting off say one’s neck.
Many ways for a lamp to go bad, one of my favorites in collection is a
incandescent 1,500w lamp that had it’s
filament explode out of it and the glass around the
filament quickly cool around the hole as if bullet in slow motion
thru fabric - the glass around where the
filament came out retains a hole with the
bulb in a hole bent around that hole. The opposing side of the mind you
incandescent lamp forms a sort of “Killroy was here” type pucker
image in due to the gasses sucked out of the lamp that fast, than cooling just as fast, the also molten temperature glass on the opposing end from where the
filament escaped collapsed inward in that shape. That’s an
incandescent lamp and you could have touched it in it in the oil from the skin effecting the glass.
Lots of reasons for a lamp to explode, not always due to touching it. Have another example of a touched lamp where as opposed to blowing up as if balloon before explosion, where the
filament was just blown by way of reflecting away from the oil in where the heat from the lamp now goes, that the
filament simply stretched to the extent that it penetrated the glass on the opposing side. Still works, just that the
filament itself bubbled out in the glass in totally encasing itself within the glass and bubbling as blob of
filament and glass outside the normal dia. of the glass. Other times there is white finger pints etched into the glass of a lamp or a
bubble. Touching a quartz glass
halogen lamp does not always cause it to explode and in fact could be less likely to make a lamp explode than some over voltaging or
spike conditions - this especially during already warn
filament conditions.
As for toweletts, cotton pads should leave more lint than the average kitchen paper towel. The washroom paper towel could often be really good for cleaning a lamp - depends upon how stiff it is. Rub the paper towel and note any lint that rubs off and or becomes air born. Lots of industrial towels on the market same rule with them in what is lint free or not. Kleenex tissues would tend to leave behind lint which is not good for the quartz lamp.
Lens cleaning tissue will also tend to work well - really well. Isopropyl Alcohol towelettes come with moving light lamps and can be bought
thru suppliers such as Grainger. Otherwise a spray
bottle full of it and the towel will work fine.
Not going to start a fire - the glass and lamp will cool far to fast to do so other than perhaps on an open faced
fixture that does not have a screening of direct contact of the hot part of the lamp to what’s combustible. Set that
fixture on the
stage face down and turn it on and you are much more likely to cause a fire.
Makeup cleaning sponges on the other
hand might work well.
While shopping for towels to clean, get some powder free latex medical gloves (non-latex for the women folk.) That keeps the lamp clean while touching it as long as the gloves are clean.
Lamps explode at times, wouldn't be too worried about the exploding lamp causing a fire. If the glass were close enough to cause a fire, than it under normal operating conditions would also cause a fire.