Environment protection within the Railway

Following global studies it was noticed that among all transportation means, the railway network is one of the more compatible with the transport and mobility notions. Among the already known advantages - low energy consumption, small area occupied, superior safety to all other types of transportation - is also the low level of pollution. To monitor the impact over the environment, at the CFR SA at each regional department there was created a laboratory for environmental protection. The role of these labs is to monitor the environmental factors in contact with the railway. Monitoring is necessary to establish the physical and chemical characteristics of the environmental factors acting upon the railway activity in comparison with the standards imposed by the specific norms stipulated in international agreements. In this sense, analyses for different factors as water, air, earth (especially the gases for the centrally heat enterprises) are being made.
Within 2 years, these laboratories of the railway regional departments were equipped with all sorts of devices necessary for their analysing process: photo-meter, photo-lab S12, Horiba spectophometer, oxy-meter, acoustic-meter, Quintox gas analyser, analytical balance type ACCULAB LA 110, PH-meter M 90, etc.
By the help of these labs, several analyses are made as for example: the water (PH, total suspension, oil products, oxygen chemical consume, biochemical oxygen consume, chrome and detergents); the air (CO, NOX and SO2), earth (PH, conductivity, oil products), noises and vibrations. Not all the labs are equipped, as it should so that they cannot provide us with all the necessary analyses. Their activity is presently that of tests sampling and re-analysing of the previous test on request for the CFR SA and for the other railway transportation units.
To become more efficient-to provide with analyses for other persons than for our company's members- papers for licensing the eight research labs of CFR as Bucharest, Craiova, Timisoara, Cluj, Brasov, Iasi, Galati and Constanta were sent to the RENAR (National Network of Research Labs of Romania).

Reporting Silvia Mitulescu