Environmental Mapping of the Regional Chemical Exposome of Legacy Pollutants and Contaminants of Emerging Concern Across Texas and New Mexico

The environmental chemical exposome encompasses legacy pollutants and emerging contaminants that collectively shape ecological and human health risks. Texas and New Mexico contain petrochemical, agricultural, mining, and energy production regions, yet no quantitative synthesis has characterized exposure research or identified knowledge gaps that limit environmental management. We present a bibliometric and text-mining assessment of research on environmental pollution across both states from 1999 to 2024. A search of Web of Science and PubMed yielded 4936 records, of which 191 met eligibility criteria. Keyword normalization, trend factor and co-occurrence analyses, geospatial mapping, and domain classification characterized the landscape. The most frequent keywords were air pollution, lead, arsenic, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, reflecting emphasis on legacy contaminants and industrial air pollution. Trend factor analysis revealed growth in PFAS, EDCs, pharmaceuticals, black carbon, microplastics, and nanoplastics during 2020 to 2024; normalization of the log response ratio by period reproduced the ranking (Spearman rho = 0.999). Air (31.9%), soil and sediment (25.7%), and water (25.7%) dominated, whereas health and exposure (16.3%) and environmental justice (11.6%) remained underrepresented. Clusters included Industrial Air Quality and Health (n = 85) and Heavy Metals in Soil and Water (n = 72). Studies concentrated in the Houston Gulf Coast region, while New Mexico contributed 9.4% of publications. Population normalization, however, showed 2.2 times as many studies per resident in New Mexico as in Texas, whereas Texas had 3.2 times as many studies per unit land area. Approximately 82% did not address environmental justice. Persistent gaps include PFAS homologs, 6PPD quinone, flame retardants, neuroactive pharmaceuticals, transboundary waterways, and Indigenous communities. These findings establish an evidence-based framework for prioritizing regional monitoring, biomonitoring, environmental justice research, and regulatory decisions.