I'll second eam44's suggestion to talk to your doctor. There is no way to guess how your body might have been affected by exposure to asbestos, if there was exposure at all.

These were square floor tiles? Unless the tiles were sanded or otherwise shredded, the asbestos fibers are pretty well contained in the tiles. A tile snapped in two shows a few fibers sticking out of the broken ends, but they don't fly into the air like some other asbestos-containing materials. I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Serious consequences from a single exposure is highly unlikely.

This is really an understatement. Asbestos is naturally occurring in many places in the U.S. There are about 13 million people in the Los Angeles area and all of them who have lived there for any significant amount of time have breathed more asbestos than you likely did.

Asbestos is a carcinogenic material but much of the fervor was created by the legal industry finding a wide variety of manufacturers they could sue. We didn't evacuate L.A., Alaska, or Washington state, because mild exposure is statically not that dangerous. Asbestos is fairly dangerous for people who work in it every day, most meta-studies have reached a lung cancer rate of 3 to 4 times higher than normal for asbestos miners. That is significant, but for perspective that means that more than 90% of the people who mined asbestos for 20 years aren't getting lung cancer. Some asbestos also cuts your lungs causing scarring, but again a single exposure will do much less damage than an instance of pneumonia.

You have more pressing things to worry about, so chill.

You can smoke three packs a day and not get lung cancer, or die of it from second hand smoke (as 7300 people do every year, according to the CDC). The asbestos exposure health risk isn’t strictly linear either.

The only way to know your health status is to see your physician, describe your exposure, and keep going in for your annual check-ups.

And don’t take advice from online renovation forums. I am a scientist, not a physician.

"And don’t take advice from online renovation forums. I am a scientist, not a physician."

Who is committing the logical fallacy of relevance, ad hominem circumstantial. You must address the arguments on an online renovation forum, not the circumstances of the arguers.

Joe, you are assuming that everyone’s arguments are of equal value. This is no more true in your field than in mine.

You get upset when people complain that Corian stains because they don’t have the technical expertise to understand that Corian technically cannot stain, but gets microabrasions. It is ridiculous for anyone to believe that my opinion, or yours, on asbestos exposure is equivalent to that of a gp or a pulmonologist.

As for your diagnosis that this man needs a psychologist, I’d say physician heal thyself, but you’re not one. Neither am I. I am also not entirely convinced that this thread was started in earnest.

I appreciate the comments, everyone. I am going to stop worrying about it. I understand asbestos a bit better now, and realize that worrying about relatively small exposures is not a good use of my time.

@Joseph Corlett, LLC Yes, I could probably stand to see a psychologist, lol. I do have pretty bad anxiety when it comes to my health.

@eam44 Why would you think that I’m not being earnest? Maybe my question is a little bit ridiculous to someone who knows more about home renovation than me, but the thread was definitely started earnestly. I just get anxious about this sort of thing. I now realize that I was worrying too much.

You can smoke three packs a day and not get lung cancer, or die of it from second hand smoke (as 7300 people do every year, according to the CDC). The asbestos exposure health risk isn’t strictly linear either.

I believe you are oversimplifying those results, the meta-analysis showed that lifetime non-smokers who lived with smokers for many years were 20% more likely to contract lung cancer than lifetime non-smokers who lived with non-smokers. Certainly enough to take action in public areas, but hardly convincing evidence of the non-linear relationship of cancer to exposure.

The only way to know your health status is to see your physician, describe your exposure, and keep going in for your annual check-ups.

Let's ignore that we are in a pandemic right now and statistically speaking that the greatest risk of lung damage imaginable right now is visiting a room full of people who might be infected with a virus that attacks the lungs. What tests do you want them to run on a 23 year old person with no symptoms who possibly had a minor exposure to asbestos in the past? Are you advising $15,000 (that insurance is not going to pay for) in annual tests to monitor a possible condition with one in a billion odds of occurring? Maybe everyone who has walked through a cloud of second hand smoke needs the same tests.

Feel free to discuss this with your doctor, I never said otherwise, but don't panic about it. You are incredibly unlikely to develop serious consequences from the single exposure described. However, I was actually just riding in the car with my favorite doctor when I saw the response and she had one piece of advice for you, "you should definitely tell him not to marry a guy whose passion is remodeling old houses."

Rusty.
I will assure you that everybody is different in their own symptoms and reaction to everything. I just watched Colbert with Tom Hanks explain how he and his wife got Covid very differently from each other. No two are alike. That said, I am a son of an Asbestos victim. Dad was a millright which meant he had to go everywhere in hill papermill (lots of possible contamination spots) 40 years in the industry. He was already vacationing on his banked time at 64 prior to his retirement when it just appeared to get him. He was playing tennis like always (20 yrs) when he could not catch a breath. His lung had collapsed not because of the cancer in the lungs perse but because asbestos had gotten into the membrane that keeps the lungs attached to the ribs and muscles that help inflate the lungs.
on his death bed he was concerned he may have attributed to not only his first wife who had passed away 20 years earlier of cancer but to me who also did things like wash his work overalls. Thankly so far I am very healthy.
Two young toddlers rolling around licking the floor is by no means am impossible thought. You yourself may not have. If he used a saw he could have disintegrated the tiles enough to be airborne. Vacuum will definitely aerate to particles and no they don't just go away. Asbestos is like arsenic, it slowly builds up and very slowly is removed if at all from the body.
Quantity and quality of the particles are the only real factors. If you feel sick get a blood test with your doctor. Find one that knows what to look for if that is your concern. No psychiatry necessary unless you have other mental issues. Be happy that right now you feel healthy, stay positive, the sun is still shining. Don't build clouds.