Gridlock over climate-change policy has dominated the headlines for the last few years, but workaday environmental regulation has continued steamrolling along, mostly under the radar. That changed last week when the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a new federal standard for ozone air pollution — one that will turn most of the nation into a Clean Air Act “non-attainment” area, in many cases permanently.

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The Clean Air Act already pervades Americans’ work and personal lives in ways both obvious and subtle. But the current system will seem a libertarian paradise compared to the brave new world we’re about to enter. The EPA’s new standard will greatly increase regulatory burdens in areas that already violate the ozone standard, and will expand the Byzantine Clean Air Act planning system into large areas of the country that have never been subject to them.

Due to relatively low ozone levels during the last few years, only 19 percent of the nation’s metropolitan areas violate EPA’s current eight-hour ozone standard of 85 parts per billion, down from 40 percent just a few years ago. Non-metropolitan counties — those that include only rural areas or smaller cities — are in even better shape, with only a four-percent violation rate. Absent a tougher standard, this would have meant that many areas would shortly be getting out from under some of the Clean Air Act’s most odious requirements.

With the new standard, however, non-attainment will become the norm, rather than the exception. EPA is proposing a standard somewhere in the range of 70–75 ppb. Based on current ozone levels, this would put 67–87 percent of metropolitan areas in violation, and 39–72 percent of non-metropolitan counties.

In a press conference this morning, EPA administrator Stephen Johnson stressed repeatedly that the science demonstrates the need for a tougher ozone standard to protect public health. But if anything, what has become clear over the last several years is that ozone at current levels is having, at worst, a miniscule effect on Americans’ health and that the current standard provides safe air with plenty of room to spare.

Estimates by EPA’s own scientists indicate that going from current ozone levels to full national attainment of the proposed 70 ppb standard would reduce hospital visits for asthma and other respiratory diseases by only a few tenths of a percent. You won’t find this tiny benefit explicitly mentioned or calculated in any government reports, but you can calculate it from the data they do provide.

But even this is an exaggeration, because the estimate excludes contrary evidence. For example, a study of California’s Central Valley sponsored by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) found that higher ozone was associated with fewer hospital visits. Both CARB and EPA omitted this study from their technical documentation to justify a tougher ozone standard.

Ozone also can’t be causing people to develop asthma. Asthma prevalence has nearly doubled during the last 25 years, but ozone and every other air pollutant sharply declined at the same time. Even direct attempts to link air pollution to asthma have come up empty. CARB and researchers from the University of Southern California tracked thousands of children from ages 10 to 18. Children who grew up in communities with the highest ozone levels in the country had a 30-percent lower risk of developing asthma when compared with children in areas with background ozone levels. The same study also showed that growing up in areas that exceed the current 85 ppb ozone standard 120 days per year has no effect on lung growth or capacity.

The tiny effects of ozone shouldn’t be surprising. All over the nation, hospital visits for asthma are lowest in July and August, when ozone is highest. And the lowest asthma rates in the world are found in developing and ex-Soviet countries with awful air pollution, while Western countries with the world’s cleanest air have the highest asthma rates.

Perhaps the most serious claim leveled at ozone is that it kills thousands of people prematurely each year. But, like most other claims of harm from low-level air pollution, this one rests on indirect evidence from so-called “observational” epidemiology studies — studies in which researchers look for correlations between air pollution and risk of death in large groups of people. A wealth of evidence now shows that observational studies give spurious results, often “finding” effects that aren’t really there, and producing results that reflect researchers’ expectations, rather than reality.