Mexican Kilns Cast Pall on El Paso : Industry: Scientist at Los Alamos lab is trying to perfect a clean-burning, economical alternative to brick making in which old tires are burned.

In Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, plumes of black smoke gush from brick-making kilns each night. The smoke drifts over the border before dawn, and by 7 a.m. schoolchildren in neighboring El Paso, Texas, are being told to stay indoors.

Three hundred miles to the north in New Mexico, Los Alamos National Laboratory materials engineer Karl Staudhammer sits at a computer, drawing pictures of how to cause kilns to burn cleaner. He models different shapes, air flows and temperatures, and dreams of clear blue skies.

“I believe that with the right funding,” he says, “we could clean the border in five years.”

Smoke from brick making may not seem like a tremendous problem, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lists brick making as the third-largest polluter along the U.S.-Mexico border, after automobiles and dust from dirt roads. Bricks are molded out of clay, set out in the sun to dry and then baked for about 24 hours in kilns that burn old tires and other trash.

The Mexican government has been trying to get brick makers to change their kilns for about 10 years. But that nation’s 130,000 brick makers rebuffed loan offers from bureaucrats, businesses and banks to fund conversions to natural gas.

After the passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Mexican government made it illegal for brick makers to burn tires in their kilns. And that restriction works during the day when inspectors are around.

But at night, many brick builders--who earn less than $2,000 a year per family--revert to low-budget fuels such as tires, used car oil and plastics. Others bury themselves in eight-foot-deep pits filled with chemical-laden sawdust from furniture factories and spend fiery hours shoveling sawdust into the kilns.

“It’s dark, ugly, black smoke,” says Mary Kelly, director of the Texas Center For Policy Studies. “The kilns are a significant source of contamination.”

A few years ago, Juarez political leaders tried a new approach to promoting gas conversions: They asked a nonprofit organization, the Federacion Mexicana de Associanes Prividas de Salud y De Sarrollo Commitario, or FMAP, to take over the project.

Since then, the group has established a brick-making school on land donated by the Mexican government. The purpose of the school--partially funded through a U.S. company, El Paso Natural Gas--was to teach Mexico’s brick makers how to use gas instead of environmentally harmful fuel.

Even with their own school, brick makers hesitated to convert. It was simply too expensive. A sample converted kiln at the school cost about $8,000 to build, and used huge amounts of gas.

FMAP president Guadalupe De La Vega knew the project needed help and spoke to a friend at the U.S. Embassy, who offered to contact Sandia and Los Alamos national labs in New Mexico.

For the past two years, Staudhammer and partner Charles Grisby basically have been volunteers, working on the project in addition to handling their regular jobs at the lab.

Using technology from Los Alamos National Laboratory, the engineers have developed a kiln that recirculates hot air using only one $800 gas burner. It turns out stronger bricks and costs less to operate.

“It’s a better mousetrap,” says Staudhammer.