Before Jesus Cruz starts his shift, he has monitors and equipment he must ensure are in working order. Each trip begins with him checking a wind monitor on the roof and filters on the side of the hybrid car he drives, named “Kendrick.”
“Everything started up and I see all these green checkmarks, perfect,” Cruz said at the start of a workday one recent Friday.
Cruz drives one of two California Air Resources Boardcars in the area for Aclima, a company that runs an air quality analysis platform. The vehicles make their waythrough south Modesto and Stanislaus County’s West Side, monitoring the air quality for 10 pollutants every second, 24 hours a day, seven days a week…