Consumer food safety concerns and interest in pesticide related information was measured by personal interviews with 479 consumers in 14 counties in California. Although concern about pesticide safety was noted by almost half of the respondents, nutritional considerations had the greatest impact on food selection criteria. Of those who volunteered pesticide safety concerns, 15% indicated they sought organic produce and 13% said they avoided or reduced produce purchases. In addition to information about the human health effects of pesticide use, consumers expressed high interest in the environmental effects of pesticide use. Consumers currently use television and newspapers as information sources and prefer these to other sources. segment on 60 Minutes claiming that children were at high risk of cancer due 'Correspondence should be addressed to Christine M. Bruhn, Center for Consumer Research, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.

The aim of this work is to study the heating efficiency of refractory microstructures by excitation of surface plasmon polaritons in the far infrared that can be used for high temperature applications. We have designed metal grating couplers on molybdenum films to maximize the absorption of a 10.6 µm CO2 laser light source. Molybdenum has been chosen since it is an industrial refractory metal combined with the fact that its optical properties in the far infrared are similar to gold but with stable high temperature performance. Linear gratings have been used as plasmonic couplers on large area substrates produced by laser milling. Real time absolute temperature measurements have been performed showing a 42 % increase in the maximum achievable temperature from 702 K to 985 K.