Environmentalist ideologues in the Obama administration are making up more reasons to wipe out more jobs. The story is a sordid one.

EPA administrator Lisa Jackson calls a tightening in the ozone standard during George W. Bush's presidency "not legally defensible." Why? Not because the lower threshold is too stringent. No, Jackson is bent out of shape because industry's cost of compliance was taken into account when setting the tighter limit. The EPA wants to ratchet the ozone standard down even further with no regard for cost whatsoever.

On what considerations would such an additional reduction be based? Why, scientific considerations, says the EPA.

But the agency is ignoring the utter lack of evidence that industrially-generated ozone affects human health. JunkScience.com's Steve Milloy finds that the EPA is resorting to "dubious laboratory tests to provide a rationale for its claim that there is no safe threshold of exposure to ozone."

Tests conducted at ozone concentrations beyond levels produced by industry show no measurable effect on human breathing. One EPA study, desperately trying to establish a connection between ozone and health degradation, found human breathing capacity reduced by 1 to 2 percent. Milloy points out:

Not only is this 1 percent to 2 percent change a long way from clinically significant declines in respiratory function, which start at about 15 to 20 percent, but respiratory measurement isn't sufficiently reliable to detect such small differences.

Translation: Obama's EPA is using shaky science to try to implement unreasonably tight pollution standards with which industry will find it prohibitively expensive to comply. More jobs will be killed. Prosperity will decay further. Evaporating employment and withering wealth are being hand-waved away based on unmeasurable physiological effects that, even if real, appear to result in physiological damage to absolutely no one.

Once again, environmentalist ideologues are refusing to consider the economic effects of unnecessarily tightening the threshold for a "pollutant." Science shows that reducing the current 84 parts-per-billion ozone standard to the EPA's proposed newest target of 60 and 70 ppb would cause not even the most infinitesimally noticeable improvement in human health. So what is the environmentalist ideologue's justification for tightening the ozone limit? Why, to improve human health.

Thusly functions the mind of the zealot.

A writer, physicist, former high tech executive, and Cajun, Chuck Rogér invites you to sign up to receive his "Clear Thinking" blog posts by email at http://www.chuckroger.com/. Contact Chuck at swampcactus@chuckroger.com.