My dad was a floor layer for years. When I was 5-6 my dad drew a line on a floor with chalk & told me to take a few asbestos tile & not cross the line or I would fall out the opening but toss the tiles into a truck parked down below. Our house had asbestos tiles in the basement, all 5 of us played on the floor all the time. About 10 yrs ago dad & I removed all the asbestos tiles from basement of church. None of us have had cancer. Dad is 95 & often pried up old tiles, if I did it again I would use a face mask & open windows. People used to have an asbestos mat right next to their stove to put hot items on, I saw people rub the pan across those things, all schools had asbestos tile floors when i was growing up, lot of them remain, park I go to every week has it on gym floor. It's been on since my kids went there for cub scout events 38 yrs ago. I wouldn't sand the stuff that remains, that probably would give you some in your lungs. Leaving it is going to cause lumps under carpet & especially if you move furniture around. Most of my house has asbestos tile under the carpet pad as my house is over 40 yrs old,required to have flooring on floors even tho you were going to carpet it or house couldn't be sold, all new tracts of houses were like that. So my dad put in bathrooms & kitchen before we moved in. So there are hundreds of thousands of houses with asbestos tile in them. It's kind of like lead paint, won't harm you unless you eat it or sand it like crazy, then you can ingest it. What kind of floor is it, wood or cement? You can paint the Kilz on & then put a carpet pad down & carpet over it. The pad helps keep heat in as the back of it is kind of like a plastic stuff & top is dense foam. Makes the carpet more comfortable & seem more plush also.It's well worth the money.

There is a product called DeltaFL...and others out there that may be the ticket for you. The website below gives an idea of its applications. HD, Lowes and others sell a product from Canada that is similar and has 24" X 24" (I think that's the size) T & G OSB board panels attached to the plastic dimples. If someone has used this product, or an equivalent, could you share your experience? Here is a link that might be useful: DeltaFL

Have them try to nail it first. Rare is the occasion you cant nail concrete strip through two layers of tile. Dont glue the tackless. It will be a futile effort because the pressure of the stretch will most likely pull up the tile the tack strips are glued to. Pre-padded carpet is certainly an alternative like Alice suggests. Other options are shooting in a layer of plywood over the tile that you can nail tackless to and install carpet on if nothing else works. We have successfully drilled through asbestos tile with slow rotary masonry drills/bits. This did not create dust from the tile because of its resiliency. It just flaked off chips that were easily shop vacced up. I do not recommend a high speed drill though. If the tile has resiliency then it may work for you, but if brittle, then may cause dust because of its hardness and is not recommended.

Many years ago when we lived in a house in St Louis that was built around 1936-38, the old peel and stick tiles on the floor were coming up. I asked my husband if I could remove them and he agreed. After removing them, I discovered a plywood floor. I called DH at work and said "I thought plywood came into being after WWII?" He said that generally, that was so. Hmmm. Then I realized that the floor in the small walk-in pantry was different than the kitchen - it was red linoleum and it was LOWER than the kitchen floor. So I grabbed a hammer and started pulling up the plywood. Under that was red linoleum. It had practically "liquified" over the years - it was a gooey mess. By this time, DH was home from work and took a paint scraper to this mess. Under it, we discovered tongue and goove hardwood floors! It was like finding buried treasure! Now, this was in the late 1970's when there was little talk about asbestos and its dangers in removing it. DH spent the next couple of weekends, scraping all the old red linoleum and the goop underneath, off these floors. We then had a flooring company come and sand and polyurethane the floors. Did it harm us? Who knows. DH died in 2005 from prostate cancer - it was presumed to have been inherited. I have had respiratory problems since 1970 - they are progressive and have worsened. I don"t think removing this small kitchen floor had anything to do with our health issues, but we'll never know. Today, we would hire someone to do this properly. Fast forward to 18 years ago and a pipe break in a 2nd floor bathroom. Water ended up coming all the way to the basement when peel and stick tiles floated up over the floor drains. It was very easy to get them up, but the glue most likely had asbestos in it and that was a BIG problem. It had to be done properly. And it's a BIG basement! We hired an asbestos removal company to do the work and used a commercial orange gel cleaner that loosened the glue so it could be scraped off and removed, then the remains were allowed under local Code to be washed down the floor drain. What was key was to NOT sand this stuff off. That would have released the asbestos fibers into the air, they would have gotten into the duct work and the entire house. Most likely, you do have some form of hardwood floor. Red oak was typically used as "sub flooring" under linoleum. It was cheap in those days. Call a flooring company and get some advice and bids.