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EL MONTE — The state’s anti-smog board has adopted the world’s stiffest air quality standards for particles of soot and dirt tinier than a human hair but dangerous enough to damage lungs. 

The California Air Resources Board voted unanimously Thursday to limit the quantity of the pollutant known as PM10, named because they are smaller than 10 microns in diameter. 

A reduction of the particles would prevent about 6,500 deaths a year, 340,000 asthma attacks and 2.8 million lost work days, according to a review of state data and health studies. 

The decision does not regulate polluters, and experts said it may be a decade before technology permits California to meet all the standards. 

However, the board generally adopts overall limits on a pollutant as a first step to regulating the sources. 

“We’re extremely pleased,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, a lobbyist for the American Lung Association of California. “From our perspective, the most important action that the board can take this decade is to adopt these standards and implement them.” 

The particles are one-seventh the diameter of human hair or smaller. They can lodge in human airways, constrict breathing and causing heart and lung damage. 

The pollutant is produced by a variety of sources, including car exhaust, power plants, construction work and farming. 

Last year, as many as 2,431 tons of the particles were emitted daily in California, according to the air resources board. 

Industry representatives pleaded with the board Thursday to reject the standards or at least put off a decision until further review. 

The California standard would be stricter than those adopted by the federal government and lead to new regulations that could crush the state trucking industry, argued Stephanie Williams, vice president of the California Trucking Association. 

“We are being ignored. The California trucking industry is not being represented before this board,” she said. 

But board member Matthew McKinnon said health was the issue. 

“It’s about particles and whether they make people sick,” he said. 

The limits, which could take effect next year, would be the tightest in the world, although the European Union tentatively has adopted the same standards for the year 2010.