Uh, can't it? Stuff like lead exposure is higher in disfavored groups, and lead exposure is very bad for IQ. All sorts of environmental pollution is bad for child development, developing brains are pretty susceptible to this stuff, and guess which people end up having to live in more polluted areas?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_racism#Impacts_o...

That’s completely hypothetical and easily refutable by rural/urban breakdown, county-level breakdowns, outperformance by poor Asians, historical LA smog, etcetera.

no, subcounty level breakdowns actually support the thesis that higher pollution is at least correlated with lower educational attainment. Don't post misinformation. "historical LA smog" isn't a statement that refutes anything. The international consensus is that pollution is bad for educational attainment as well as other iq-like metrics, this is true in India, China, Brazil, and the UK, as well as impacts of prenatal exposure being bad in NYC and internationally.

The performance gaps are too high for this kind of nonsense.