AS THEY focus on how to speed up economic growth, President Clinton and his economic brain trust are considering many options. One reality they must accept, however is that the further tightening of environmental regulations does not increase competitveness, create jobs, nor even improve health in a significant way. The opposite is more nearly the case--as borne out by economic reasoning and by scientific facts.

Bill Clinton surely understands that the electorate has not given him a mandate for environmental extremism. Its goal of zero risk is not only unrealistic, but unattainable and infinitely costly. In this connection, it is encouraging to not that the new EPA administrator, Carol Browner, has begun to question the zero-risk-based standard set by the 1958 Delaney amendment. We can spend much of the monies involved--currently 3 percent of America's gross domestic product, and rising rapidly--more effectively in the private sector, and thereby improve human well-being.

Much campaign argument had been devoted to whether tightened environmental regulations create jobs. Wrong issue! The real questions are or should be: Do we need more stringent environmental controls for better human health and ecological values? Are the additional benefits worth the additional cost? How clean is clean? The answers to these questions require solid scientific data and understanding. They cannot -and should not- be settled by emotional appeals and activist rhetoric: Society can no longer afford to waste resources on a large scale.

Existing regulations already put a huge burden on the U.S. economy, more than $600 billion per year according to studies by economist Thomas Hopkins of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Former chief White House economic adviser Murray Weidenbaum, a professor at Washington University, calculates that about a quarter of this sum relates specifically to the environment.

These astronomical costs do not show up in the federal budget or in income taxes, but are a direct expense on business which, of course, must pass it along to the consumer in the form of higher prices for everything he buys. The average annual "environmental tax" on every American household exceeds $1,500 and is growing rapidly.

Initially, regulation did prove to be cost-effective. Removing the first large increment of pollutants from water and air probably produced more benefits than it cost. In the last 20 years, there have, indeed, been tremendous improvements in the quality of the air, and of streams and lakes.

But removing be last few percentage points of pollution is enormously expensive and often not even within the reach of technology. More important, it does not produce commensurate benefits and therefore wastes resources and money. Economic theory as well as everyday experience show only diminishing returns from increasing degrees of pollution control.

Certainly, spending more than $150 billion for environmental regulation does create jobs: More and more people are needed to interpret the regulations, fill out permit forms, review the forms and approve permits, file reports and environmental impact statements, monitor emissions, inspect facilities, issue summonses and litigate. In fact, one of the fastest-growing professions is environmental law. Not surprising, when we recognize that more than 70 percent of the billions spent on the Superfund clean-up have gone to lawyering.

But while creating paper-pushing jobs, these regulations destroy even more jobs, and productive jobs at that. Factories and shops and mines, particularly small ones, close down because they cannot afford to comply with complicated regulations; the administrative costs alone can kill a business. Just try to fill out IRS forms without the help of accountants.

Large firms, of course, can adjust more easily to the regulatory environment. And they would dearly love a regime that actually reduces competition from smaller and often more innovative companies. It protects their established position and keeps out new products that have not been "approved." But the additional burden of such lowered competition is again borne by the consumer who must pay higher prices.

Local governments also are feeling the heat of ever-growing federal regulation. Last September, Ohio's major cities released a cost report on environmental compliance: more than $3 billion for the next decade.

As the Clinton team talks about spending more for infrastructure--some $20 billion a year--it's probably well to remind its members that companies are leaving California in droves and not because California lacks roads and bridges, great uni- versities and all the rest. Businesses are leaving because of high taxes and an onerous regulatory environment.

There is something surprisingly naive about the belief that government spending can create more jobs. As humorist Dave Barry puts it: "See when government spends money, it creates jobs; whereas when money, is left in the hands of taxpayers, God only knows what they do with it. Bake it into pies, probably. Anything to avoid creating jobs."

The purpose of environmental regulation is not--and should not be--to create jobs. Its announced purpose is to improve human health and protect ecological values.

If human health and a better standard of living are the major societal objectives, then we want productive economic growth, not unproductive make-work jobs based on excessive regulation.