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Poor working-class Latinos are dying from pollution due to environmental racism. Latinos in California are more likely to live and work in areas that have higher concentrations of pollutants and are more likely to be exposed to harmful chemicals for longer periods of time. Public health research indicates that environmental contaminants like particulate matter, nitrogen oxides, organochlorine compounds, organophosphate, polychlorinated biphenyls, flame retardants, lead, and mercury are directly linked to higher incidences of cancer, asthma, and heart disease.1 Public health experts have made strides by moving past what Link and Phelan call, "an emphasis on individually-based risk factors" to a more contextualized analysis of the root causes of risk factors and the effect that people of color experience as a consequence of discriminatory practices on the environment that their communities are situated in.2 This paper will focus on one example of environmental racism, the San Joaquin Valley in California, and contextualize this example within environmental health literature. The paper concludes with recommendations for a comprehensive intervention aimed at mitigating the effects of environmental racism in the San Joaquin Valley.
Background
Racialization of the poor, agricultural, working class in the Central Valley has been a 70-year process. The San Joaquin Valley in California is one of the most fertile regions in the world. Located in the middle of two mountain ranges, the San Joaquin Valley produces more fruits, vegetables, and livestock than any other state in the United States and has a steady annual sales total of about $25 billion.3-4 In the United States, 88 percent of farmworkers are Latino.5 This high-producing, high-earning food supply chain is also home to some of the highest concentrations of environmental toxins in the state, including some of the worst water contamination scores in the United States.6
Historical Snapshot: California's Environmental Health
During World War II, UC Davis and UC Berkeley introduced new technologies (fertilizers, pesticides, GMOs, advances in mechanization) that promised to increase agricultural yields.7 For California growers and policy makers, who were mainly White Americans, new technology became an economic-growth opportunity. In order to maximize this economic potential, the natural landscape had to be altered to suit the new machinery.
From 1946 to 1955, California lived "the second American agricultural revolution," which required an intensification of land and...