Nor have more recent immigrant groups such as the Hmong, Thai and Mien, who came to work in the fields during the 1970s and now live in CentralValleycities such as Stockton, Fresno and Modesto or, of course, the Mexicans, who have been coming since then and are now the majority of workers in the fields, where Spanish is the common language.
What ails Modesto is what ails Bakersfield (No. 1), Hanford (No. 3), Fresno (No. 4) and other small CentralValleycities (the Valley accounts for all the California cites on the list aside from Los Angeles): heavy doses of nitrogen oxide and hydrocarbons stemming from gasoline, chemical processing, paints and other industrial byproducts that harm the ozone and release particle pollution into the air.
These findings will be of particular concern to cities in the CentralValley of California like Bakersfield and Fresno, which have for years ranked among the highest in the nation for air pollution.