2002 Volume 43 Issue 1 Pages 37-40
Evaluation of environmental safety is very important for human health. It is known that railways provide a clean transportation system with low CO2 emission, but there is little information about the evaluation of ecotoxicological safety in the railway transportation system. In this paper, we report about ecotoxicological safety tests and the bioremediation research for PCB contaminated ballast stones. The former is an introduction of biological methods used in our laboratory to evaluate the environmental safety that can be applied to railway environments. The latter is an example of bioremediation research using a PCB degrading microorganism. Since there are no good physico-chemical methods to remove PCB contamination from ballast stones, bioremediation might lead us to a solution for environmental safety.