School-based exposures to oil and gas development for public school children in the United States.

backgroundOil and gas development (OGD) can release numerous hazards, such as air and water pollution. Residential proximity to OGD is associated with adverse health outcomes in children, including birth defects and cancer.

objectiveWhile children spend significant time at school, little is known about school-based exposure. We quantified the number of K-12 U.S. schools near OGD and evaluated whether exposure varied by school-level sociodemographic status.

methodsWe combined public school data from the National Center for Educational Statistics with OGD well location data. We estimated proximity and density of active OGD within 800 m, 1.6 km, and 10 km buffers for each school during the 2022-2023 school year. We used logistic regression with state fixed effects to estimate associations between OGD exposure and schools having >50% students of non-Hispanic White race, Hispanic ethnicity, and free/reduced lunch eligibility, overall and stratified by rurality.

results29,649 (29.2%) of U.S. public schools were within 10 km of OGD. Overall, predominantly White (OR: 1.37, 95% CI: [1.32-1.43]) and free/reduced lunch eligibility (1.14 [1.09-1.19]) schools were more likely to be within 10 km of OGD. In rural areas, schools with predominantly Hispanic and free/reduced lunch-eligible students had 1.51 (1.15-1.97) and 1.20 (1.00-1.45) times the odds of being within 800 m of OGD, respectively; this was consistent in micropolitan, but not metropolitan, areas. Schools with predominantly non-Hispanic White students were more likely to be near OGD (800 m: 2.10 [1.93-2.27]) only in metropolitan areas. SIGNIFICANCE: Over 14.5 million students attended schools within 10 km of OGD in 2022-2023. These schoolchildren often disproportionately came from persistently marginalized groups compared to their less-exposed peers, and patterns varied strongly by urbanicity. Exposure to OGD while at school may harm students' health and academic development, especially among children in low-resource settings. IMPACT STATEMENT: This study provides new information on estimating exposure to OGD in U.S. public schools nationwide. More than 14.5 million U.S. public school students were potentially exposed to OGD during the 2022-2023 school year, and these school children tended to be from consistently marginalized groups. Exposure to OGD at school may be detrimental to students' health and academic development, and these effects may be amplified in low-resource settings. This work has potential health implications for any state with oil and gas development, which should be considered in ongoing policy discussions on public health protection, particularly as regulations change.