RE: asbestos tile/worried sick

14 years ago

* Posted by

mandypark

(amanda.vierling@cox.net) on

Fri, Feb 5, 10 at 11:50

Hello,

I am freaking out here and am looking for some advice/reassurance that I haven't doomed my children to sure death in 40 years. We live in a condo that was built in 1973. My husband took it upon himself to scrape the popcorn ceilings without having them tested before. He didn't not properly cover anything up and we ended up with popcorn ceiling all over the floor. He then used my brand new Dyson to vacuum it all up. After all this was said and done, I had it tested for asbestos. It tested positive for 2%. I have 3 small children in the the house. What do I do? This was an ongoing project of over 6 months, where he did small bits at a time. Do I need to replace the couches and carpet?? What about the bits of dried ceilings still on the floor behind furniture? I'm so worried, any advice will greatly appreciated.

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Comments (4)

glennsfc
Original Author
14 years ago
As this thread refused to die and reached its 150 post limit, I have resurrected it so that Mandypark can get responses to her post about her popcorn ceiling removal concerns.

You have not doomed your children to sure death in 40 years. Not everyone exposed to the fiber develops an asbestos induced disease. Casual exposure should not be of great concern to anyone. Repeated exposures accompanied by smoking or repeated exposures to second hand smoke greatly increases the chances of developing disease attributable to asbestos exposure.

However, you need to thoroughly clean ALL horizontal surfaces and any duct work. And, perhaps replacing the carpet might be a wise thing to do, but who knows? Discreetly employing the services of an environmental testing company to monitor the air quality in your home before and then after thorough cleaning should be able to tell you if any residual fibers are present and in what quantities over and above the background levels typical for your region. You may find that the levels in your home air match the levels normally found in your region. Then you would be able to rest easy that your families' health has not been compromised.

The information you can find about asbestos in the home provided by the EPA is informative. However, the information provided by the Consumer Products Safety Commission can be particularly anxiety producing for some folks. So, if you go searching for information, take what you read with a grain of salt and employ common sense. It is certainly best to have no exposure, but as I've said casual exposure shouldn't be of great concern.

But, I'm not a doctor or an environmental scientist/epidemiologist, so take what I've said with a grain of salt.
uglyhair
14 years ago
Yikes, i'd be a little scared as well. I'm an OSHA Certified Asbestos Consultant. At this point, you might want to call in some professional help to make sure whatever residual asbestos that is left is abated corrected. Did the dust get into the air handling system and other areas of the house? The abatement company will help evuate things like that. An abatement company will come in and scrub everything really well with right HEPA vacs, negative air machines, etc. You could run air sample now before cleanup, but it might just cause you more anxiety if they fail. Get multiple bids for the job as abatement companies can be all over the place price wise. Don't go with the cheap guy, go with the guy in the middle.

Cheers, Mike
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To put things into perspective ... the persons who got lung cancer from asbestos exposure were not hanging out for a few hours near some kitchen floor tile that was being removed. They were mining it, working in factories that made things out of it, and spraying it onto ships or steel girders as insulation ... heavy exposure for years and years. Or they were the families of these people who cam home with asbestos dust all over their clothes ... for years and years. And most of them were heavy smokers. So, as long as your grandchild doesn't take up a 3-pack a day cigarette habit and start hanging out with asbestos miners, she'll be OK.
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Great. Thanks for the responses. I am going to cover the 9x9 tiles. But when i took up the kitchen floor there was a seam in the middle of the floor where the two peices of plywood met. It looks like the person used some type of filler/glue over this seam. it covers about 4 inches on either side of the seam and it looks black or dark grey. Has anyone heard of using cutback glue on seams? its just this dark stuff over top of the seam and am concerned that it might be cutback glue which i hear has asbestos. I will try to post a picture. I am going to grab a piece and have it tested but was just wondering if anyone has ever heard of using that for a filler. Or do you think it would be a type of lever compound or something. Thanks. this stuff is driving me NUTS!!
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You can cut off a chunk and send it off to a lab to test for asbestos content-- obviously, don't do that in an obvious place if you're not immediately planning on replacing it or covering it. If you can lift a baseboard and get material from the edge, then cover the missing section back over with the baseboard, that's often a good location. For the mastic, you can get it wet and scrape up some and send it off for testing. The lab will almost always have specific instructions on safe ways to collect material for testing and how much you need. Similar appearing materials are all over the place on actual asbestos content. Vinyl asbestos tiles tend to be square and have kind of a marbled look. They are often, but not always, 9x9. The vinyl asbestos tiles are generally quite low risk compared to the asbestos-backed sheet vinyl, because the asbestos fibers are bound in a matrix with the vinyl. Unless you pulverize them in removal, you're not going to get airborne fibers taking them out. If you contrast whatever your local recommendations are for VAT removal with sheet vinyl removal, they're usually pretty different-- the main thing people are concerned about with VAT is how you dispose of it. For sheet vinyl, though, they're really worried about how you take it up. Mastics can be pretty difficult to get up. For example, the black mastic was really easy to get up with Bean-E-Doo (whatever they call it now)-- anything else, though, forget it. The remnants of the Bean-E-Doo itself were challenging (lots of soap, water, scrubbing, etc.) However, though the same chemical said it works on old carpet adhesives, it didn't work at all for me. If you have things tested and the tile's asbestos and the mastic's not, the tiles are pretty easy to remove nondestructively with steam (e.g., a steam iron or a wallpaper steamer, or you can rent a big machine that heats the tiles for you). Then you can rent a big commercial scraper to get the mastic up, which is the most efficient. If the mastic does contain asbestos, either it shifts easily with heat or it doesn't, it's water soluble or oil soluble, etc. Use whatever people think is the best method for the specific type of mastic you have. Or paint over the mastic with one of the sealing compounds if the standard removal methods don't work. Since your tiles are loose, though, I'd take them out before putting any new flooring down.
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1. If installed by the book, VAT tiles can last almost indefinitely in a residential setting. Same with a quality vinyl tile. 2. Flooring manufacturers kept the look when doing the change from VAT to VCT. 3. Both VAT and VCT tiles are cold to the touch. Both are in the hard surface flooring category. 4. Perhaps the tiles in the kitchen have shrunk a little and the grout you are seeing is actually adhesive residue between the tiles (BTW, the shrink...if that is what it is...is a good sign that this is VCT and not VAT, as VAT is very dimensionally stable). 5. A gouge here and there should be no problem whatsoever. 6. The hairline fractures also should not be a problem, so long as the product doesn't crumble over time. Any acrylic floor dressing or polish will seal the tile surface and fill the little fissures, nicks, gouges and joints between the tiles to the point where nothing is going to escape from the product. About 5 thin coats of acrylic floor polish ought to do it. These polishes are self-dissolving, so you only need to apply them to worn areas to keep the surface film intact and looking good.
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janicedallas86
7 years ago
Glenn, you answered a question years ago about my 1987 Ken tile white 3 brick colonial tile 9X9 flooring. I was told they were solid vinyl. You stated you thought they were asbestos free. Recently I saw some photos that were made a few years before and they do look exactly like mine. Are there any catalogs out there showing later years? I would really like to hear your thoughts. Please respond janice dallas@hotmail.com. I'm really having trouble with the new site and almost didn't find you. Janice
glennsfc
Original Author
7 years ago
If Kentile Colonial Brick 9" x 9" contains any of the fiber, it would be encased in the tough PVC of the product. There were Vinyl Asbestos imitations made by several companies. You can find catalogs for sale on Ebay occasionally, but they sell for hundreds of dollars...seems product liability attorneys want them for research and court presentations.

RE: asbestos tile/worried sick

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RE: asbestos tile/worried sick

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