Asbestos Still In Use
By Jim Palmer Jr.

I’m looking out my office window today at the only remaining residence in a commercially zoned area that has gradually converted to commercial use in the last 20 years.  The old house is in the process of being demolished and that space will soon be the site of a new business.  I have watched as they painstakingly, and at great expense, removed anything that remotely resembled asbestos.  Now that the asbestos has been removed they can accelerate the demolition work!

Most people think asbestos only exists in these old structures, but the truth is that asbestos is still being used in many building products that are readily available at most local hardware stores.  Some of the everyday products containing asbestos are; roofing materials, cement siding, sheetrock and sheetrock mud, vinyl and asphalt floor tiles, and mastic adhesive for vinyl floors and carpeting. Prolonged inhalation of asbestos fibers can cause serious or fatal illness such as; mesothelioma, lung cancer and asbestosis.  It is not just a problem of the past, it still kills around 5,000 workers per year!

Asbestos is a naturally occurring silicate mineral with long thin microscopic fibrous crystals.  It was first used more than 4,000 years ago when the Greeks and Romans found that it had resistance to fire and heat.

There are now many federal regulations concerning the handling of asbestos materials particularly when they are removed from commercial or public buildings during demolition or remodeling projects.  When such materials are classified as “friable” they fall under federal regulations.  That means when any material that contains more than one percent asbestos by weight or area can be crumbled, pulverized or reduced to powder by the pressure of an ordinary human hand, it is considered dangerous because it can become airborne and easily inhaled into the lungs.  Once released by such crumbling, the asbestos fibers are light enough to be suspended in the air for hours and days, long after other dust from the project has settled.  Breathing in tiny particles of this mineral is what makes people sick, even though symptoms may not show up for decades.

 Asbestos abatement can be extremely expensive because of the tedious process for safe removal, but in non-commercial structures such as residential dwellings, homeowners are not regulated like in commercial applications.  However, the health issues related to asbestos inhalation are not any less significant on your home grown projects.