How To Identify Asbestos Flooring

Gather information about the age of the tiles.

How to identify asbestos flooring.

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. Asbestos tiles can be difficult to identify because you can t see the asbestos in the tile. You can either engage an asbestos remediation expert or obtain a test kit for. For all these reasons it is very difficult to determine for sure whether or not ceiling or floor tiles contain asbestos.

The older the tiles the more likely they are to contain asbestos. Determine the age of your tiles. The biggest challenge for many people who live and work in buildings with old flooring is that it s very difficult to know if the building has asbestos floor tiling. However here are a few ways you can identify asbestos in your tiles.

You can test the tile yourself or hire an asbestos professional to inspect and. The asbestos floor tile identification articles in this series illustrate that with the combination of design appearance and an idea of floor tile age many asbestos containing floor tiles or sheet flooring products can be reliably identified even before confirmation by a test by a certified asbestos testing laboratory. Asbestos was molded into many different shapes and sizes to fill different needs. Asbestos flooring was made into the 1980s though its heyday was the 1920s through the 1960s.

The risk for many people who live or work in buildings with old flooring is that it s hard to know if the building has asbestos floor tiles just by looking. For example sheets of asbestos were used to make up walls and slats of asbestos were created to serve as roof tiles. Each mold has a different location that may be stamped with manufacturer s information. With that in mind here are the keys to identifying asbestos floor tiles.

Identifying asbestos floor tiles. The definitive way to find out if tiles contain asbestos is to have them tested. If you know when the building was built or renovated this might help you estimate when the tiles were installed.