Let me tie together two issues raised and add my complaint. I bought an apartment (co-op) built in the 1970's several months ago. The entire place is vinyl tile (yeah, lovely,) which I think I can assume from the dating of the place, vinyl-asbetos tile. I researched as much as I can but cannot pin down the content from visual on-line comparisons, the amount of asbestos apparently varied from very little to HUGE. The place was well/heavily waxed and repainted when I moved in and I smelled nothing. Moths went by. Only, recently I am getting annoyed with the smell of cigarette smoke. I have a good nose and have not smoked in 30 years. I have tired everything including keeping the apartment pressurized with fresh air. Bloor and ceiling are concrete and there seem to be no gaps ANYWHERE at the floor line. Plumbing entries are all sealed. I smell it worst at my desk and where my desk chair rolls the wax has worn out and the floor feels porous/pebbly/sandy. I wash it frequently but have not put down a new layer of wax yet. Question: Is it conceivable that years of cigarette smoke have seeped into the vinyl-asbestos tiles and are liberated from the wax free areas getting SQUOOSHED by the weight of a rolling desk chair? I think I can presume that any asbestos particles would be odorless (however fearful.) I really should cover this ugly tile but I HATE wall to wall carpets and hardwood is so expensive and that synthetic wood is not a lot better than the tile. If one removes 700 square feet of Vinyl-asbestos tile (down to concrete) is the cost prohibitive? Does cigarette smoke sneak its way though latex paint after 6 months months odorless burial?

Forgot to mention that we are planning to redo that room with groutable vinyl tiles, in case that matters.

I paid about $2K to have an asbestos removal company take up my kitchen and basement tile floors. They did it correctly, hazmat suits, air blowing outside the house, rooms sealed off, etc. But this powder room was forgotten! Someone shut the door and they didn't see it! So, now I've got 16 square feet of presumed asbestos-containing floor tile (don't know since this particular tile wasn't tested) either to cover up or remove. My carpenter doesn't think it's worth calling in the asbestos removal people, and in my state, a homeowner can remove non-friable suspected asbestos-containing flooring up to 100 square feet. I'd like to cover it up. All the EPA websites say cover up asbestos tile. It's not dangerous if it's not friable (crumbling) and my tile is not. The underlayment for Click will add more height to the powder room floor. There's a silvery foam type sold by Farbo (it's 1/8" at least), and whisper wool underlayment that's 1/8" thick. So my powder room floors would be 3/8" higher than my kitchen floor. Will this look bad? Will the underlayment be enough to "hide" the uneven floor caused by the missing pieces of white tile? Or will I need to fill them in/even out the floor with some leveling or patching product? I looked up t-moldings and reducer moldings -- not the look I was hoping for, but I can live with it if I have to. I understand Farbo no longer sells transition moldings. I was hoping I could get the Marmoleum and the wood floor to abut each other at the same height, but I'm assuming this isn't possible with Click? Does anyone know? Does anyone have Click installed adjacent to a wood floor without an expansion gap?

It's really a matter of how well the adhered tiles are stuck. If you can get something like one of those roofing tear up bars underneath and pop the tiles up in full pieces, you aren't likely to generate much asbestos dust. The adhesive can have asbestos also so it could be wet scraped and picked up with a wet vac with a capture bag. If the tiles are adhered such that they break into little pieces, you can likely float where the loose tiles came up and put a new floor over the top. There's also floating vinyl floors that sound like an ideal solution for your situation but I know little about the efficacy or quality of these products.