In a comment last week, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality chairman Buddy Garcia told Texans, "When the [EPA] announced its new ozone standard, critics across the state jumped to the conclusion that the air we breathe is unhealthful. Nothing could be further from the truth"

Garcia's perception of where the truth lies is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass," in which the White Queen told Alice, "Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." But wishing doesn't make it so.

We look to the medical and scientific experts for the truth, and for decades it's been well-established that ozone pollution in the air threatens the health of millions of people, not just those with asthma and other chronic lung conditions but also other children, teenagers, the elderly and even healthy adults who work or exercise outdoors.

One need only ask emergency room personnel if they get busier on high-ozone days.

But now sobering new research reveals that, at the levels currently allowed, ozone pollution also threatens normal lung development in children and can lead to premature death.

That new data is why the 23 doctors and scientists on the EPA's own Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC) last year unanimously recommended that the federal ozone standard be tightened. Rather than the current allowable level of 84 parts per billion (ppb), these top experts in the field recommended that the health-based ozone limit be lowered to somewhere in the range of 60-70 ppb.

Last month, the EPA disappointed its own experts, setting the new ozone standard at 75 ppb, meaning millions of Americans will continue breathing unhealthy air.

For Gov. Rick Perry and TCEQ Chairman Garcia, even that reduction was too much.

Perry: "These new standards are particularly onerous on Texas and punish the state because it includes one of the most comprehensively controlled industrial complexes in the world."

Garcia: "Unnecessary regulation costs jobs and raises the price of all kinds of goods and services."

Among public officials, Perry and Garcia are stunningly isolated. The National Association of Clean Air Agencies, air pollution control agencies in more than 165 metropolitan areas, told the EPA, "In determining the levels 'requisite' to protect public health and welfare, NACAA strongly believes that EPA should follow the science — the learned, informed advice of CASAC."

Garcia even denies the state can do anything further about "mobile emissions," claiming it's up to the federal government to set tighter vehicle emission standards. Surely he knows Texas can choose between two auto standards, the federal standard or the cleaner standard that California and 12 other states have adopted. Has he forgotten that, just last year, despite public pressure and editorial support from this and other Texas newspapers, his agency didn't support legislation that would have meant cleaner cars in Texas?

He also neglects to mention that Perry vetoed a bill to limit wasteful school bus idling, a bill that would have reduced pollution while saving school districts money. And he ignores numerous proposals for incentives to reduce the miles driven by Texas motorists, incentives that have worked well in other states but which the TCEQ refuses to even seriously study.

Garcia is right to tout improvements in our air quality in recent years, but he should not use those gains as proof our air is healthful. Indeed, those gains have come in response to mandates resulting from better and better science on the effects of toxins in our air. And when medical researchers come up with new evidence that pollution levels need to be reduced even further, our top environmental regulators should come down squarely on the side of our health.

If Garcia feels his job is to protect the Texas economy from doctors and scientists, he should be on the polluters' payroll, not the breathing public's.

Jim Marston runs the Texas regional office of Environmental Defense Fund, a national nonprofit organization with more than 500,000 members.