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Pima and Pinal counties' air probably will violate federal ozone standards for the first time because of Wednesday's EPA decision to tighten the rules.

The Environmental Protection Agency decided the air in 345 U.S. counties is simply too dirty to breathe, and it ordered a multibillion-dollar expansion of efforts to clean up ozone — often called smog — in a host of cities and towns nationwide.

Authorities won't know for sure about Southern Arizona violations for a while, because 2008 is the last of three years that U.S. officials will use to determine if the standards have been exceeded.

A new EPA list says Arizona's Pima, Pinal, Maricopa and Gila counties are expected to be in violation; Maricopa County already had such problems under the old standard.

Pima County officials have said a tougher inspection program for vehicle emissions, cleaner-burning gasoline and programs to promote less driving or more use of alternative fuel may eventually be necessary to bring local air into compliance.

Otherwise, the county theoretically could lose federal highway money — years down the line — although that penalty is rarely enforced.

If Pima's air is in violation, it likely would be by a slight margin because the EPA didn't crack down as much as some scientists had wanted.

Those scientists say the federal action is still not enough to significantly reduce heart and asthma attacks from breathing smog-clogged air.

Electric utilities, oil companies and other businesses lobbied hard for leaving the smog rule alone, saying the high cost of lower limits could hurt the economy and noting that many communities still haven't met requirements set a decade ago.

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, already a target of intense criticism over emissions linked to global warming and regulation of mercury from power plants, decided to take the middle ground on smog.

He ordered Wednesday that air must contain no more than 75 units of ozone for every 1 billion units of air to be considered healthy, a reduction from the current maximum concentration of 80 to 84 parts per billion.

The new standard is higher than the 60 to 70 range recommended by an independent scientific advisory panel and a second advisory board on children's health.

An urban area is considered in violation of the ozone rules if the average level of the region's fourth-highest ozone reading for each year of a three-year period exceeds the federal limit.

The Pima County average from 2003 to 2005 was 76 parts per billion.

The fourth-highest annual ozone reading at the county air monitor that typically measures the highest reading, near Saguaro National Park East, has ranged from 75 to 77 parts per billion every year since 2003, and it hit 77 in three of the past four years, including 2007.

"It looks like we will be very, very close, but we probably will go over," said Beth Gorman, a program manager for the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality.

Pinal County could be found in violation because one of its seven monitors has shown readings that high in recent years, said Pinal's air-quality program director, Don Gabrielson. That monitor is in the unincorporated community of Queen Valley, between Apache Junction and Superior, in northern Pinal.

There aren't any monitors in southeastern Pinal County just north of Tucson, but that area is sparsely populated and is not likely to be in violation, Gabrielson said.

In 2010, EPA will decide if the standard has been violated. The counties will have three years to come up with a plan to bring the region into compliance.

Ursula Kramer, director of the Pima County Department of Environmental Quality, said the likelihood that the Tucson area's air will be just barely over the health standard is better than if the county had to require more drastic emission cuts. The deeper the cuts, the more costly they can be, Kramer said.

Kramer declined to take sides on the science underlying EPA's decision, saying she doesn't know EPA's rationale because the federal agency hasn't yet briefed county officials on it.

However, Gorman said, "we're definitely happy" that the new standard is more protective of public health, because the EPA could have kept the old standard.

Nationally, the EPA has estimated that new pollution-control efforts to comply with a 75 ppb standard would cost as much as $8.8 billion a year, although it acknowledged that does not take into account reductions in health-care costs that could be even greater.