How To Know If You Have Asbestos Floor Tiles

If you break the flooring into pieces while removing it you have effectively turned it into a friable material.

How to know if you have asbestos floor tiles.

Asbestos floor tiles are fairly common in properties of a certain age and needn t be a reason to panic you may not even need to remove them. One of the main ingredients used in old asbestos tiles was asphalt so they were primarily made in dark colors only. The most important step is they will test and tell you if you have asbestos in tiles at all. Identifying asbestos floor tiles.

Vinyl or asphalt tiles that have these colors in it have a high likelihood of asbestos fibers. You should never remove asbestos tiles yourself. Step 3 date the tiles. The definitive way to find out if tiles contain asbestos is to have them tested.

Asbestos is a potentially hazardous material that can cause cancer if the fibers are inhaled. Nevertheless it pays to know how to identify them and asbestos floor tile removal is a serious business. Before you panic it s important to realize that the best course of action may be to simply leave the tiles alone. Armstrong produced the excelon tile series beginning with a plastic asbestos floor tile series in 1954 referring to the product as vinyl plastic asbestos floor tiles beginning in 1955 and vinyl asbestos tiles from 1957 to 1980.

Even if the vinyl flooring is pulled up intact the old adhesive underneath may also contain asbestos. If you have an older home you might have asbestos in bathroom walls floor tiles and other areas. It was used in a variety of building materials until the 1980s. Because asbestos was widely used before 1980 if you have flooring tiles that were installed before then you need to test a piece of the flooring to make sure it s safe.

Another time period that asbestos floors were popular in was between the years of 1920 and 1960. Asbestos tiles can be difficult to identify because you can t see the asbestos in the tile. The use of asbestos in building materials such as insulation rolled roofing siding and floor tiles was common in the first half of the 20th century and if you have an older home it may be lurking in your floor tiles. Resilient sheet flooring containing asbestos was also produced finding wide use as early as 1968.

If you decide to remove nonfriable vinyl asbestos flooring you have to be cautious for two reasons.