Abstract
<jats:p>Beaumont and Port Arthur are two cities in Southeast Texas that host a high concentration of petrochemical refining and petroleum production facilities (Chambers et al., 2025). The presence of extensive petrochemical activity and crude oil refining spanning thousands of acres exposes adjacent "fenceline" communities (i.e., neighborhoods abutting industrial property) to air pollution (Li et al., 2024) and health risks (Gaffney et al., 2010). The region is also characterized by below-national-average incomes and a majority-minority population (Prochaska et al., 2014). United States air quality monitoring networks are designed for compliance with the Clean Air Act (United States Environmental Protection Agency, 2024), as administered by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), rather than for neighborhood-scale assessment (Gardner-Frolick et al., 2025). For regulators and industry stakeholders, a central question is whether ambient concentrations of criteria pollutants meet the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) (Gardner-Frolick et al., 2025). For residents of fenceline communities, a central question is whether the air they breathe is safe and whether they have meaningful input into understanding the air quality around them, given the disparate scales and sensitivities relative to NAAQS. McCarron et al. (2022) further caution that air pollution policies disproportionately focus on outdoor environments, even though people spend most of their time indoors. This misalignment between outdoor and indoor pollution is a gap that compounds the misalignment between monitoring and community needs. This compliance-oriented approach creates a sociotechnical misalignment. Residents report acute sensory exposures, odors, and visible emissions that may not correspond to regulatory exceedance events (Morris et al., 2004). The disconnect between lived experience and regulatory data can foster mistrust among corporations, regulators, and residents, undermining mitigation efforts (Bruno & Jepson, 2017). Visible emissions coupled with regulatory attainment can erode institutional trust (Couch & Coles, 2011). Mistrust can lower civic engagement, systemically reducing community pressure on regulatory bodies (Bruno & Jepson, 2017), while propagating mistrust toward adjacent media such as water and soil quality (Dory et al., 2017). This study asks how community perceptions and spatial patterns of industrial air quality reveal sociotechnical misalignment. We explore policy solutions to bridge this gap. We integrate qualitative experiences with technical environmental data to validate community knowledge, mitigate resident concerns, and inform regulatory frameworks that could improve air quality management and social-justice outcomes (McCarron et al., 2022; Commodore et al., 2017).</jats:p>