COUNSELOR, N.M. — On a Tuesday in March, Billton Werito drove his son Amari toward his house in Counselor, New Mexico, navigating the bumpy dirt road that winds through a maze of natural gas pipelines , wellheads and water tanks. Amari should have been in school, but a bout of nausea and a dull headache kept him from class.

“It happens a lot,” Amari explained from the backseat, glancing up from his Nintendo Switch. The symptoms usually show up when the sixth grader smells an odor of “rotten egg with propane” that rises from nearby natural gas wells and wafts over Lybrook Elementary School, where he and some 70 other Navajo students attend class. His little brother often misses school for the same reason.

“They just keep getting sick,” Amari’s father, Billton, said. “I have to take them o

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