accidentally removed asbestos tile

7 years ago

i had to remove about 100sq of tile in the kitchen. it didn’t dawn upon me until after i had removed all the tile that it might have asbestos. i just got the results back and it tested positive with 10-25% asbestos. the floor was a 1/4” layer of cork board on top with an incredibly sticky vinyl stuck to the 9x9 tiles. i used a circular saw to cut a 1 square foot piece out , no respirator then a week later me and my dad and wife removed the corkboard and pryed up about 1000 staples and used a pitchfork to remove the vinyl and tile backing with no respirator. my question is has anyone removed this stuff without a resparator? should i be worried? as of now there is a 5/8 layer of tongue and groove over the whole floor i had install tp thicken the floor

Featured Answer

DavidR

7 years ago

No worries. The people who've gotten sick from asbestos are the ones who worked with it 40+ hours per week for most of their lives, not homeowners. You wouldn't want to seek out asbestos, but casual and occasional contact carries very little hazard. You're far more likely to suffer ill health from the stress of worrying about asbestos than from the asbestos itself.

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Comments (7)

jeff kinal
Original Author
7 years ago
thanks david for the reassurance just as i was starting to stop worrying about it i remembered i used my circular saw. like you said through cant go back now. Do you think putting another layer of you get and groove osb on top would do a sufficient job of protecting us from any possible remaining fibres. also we had a few chunks of tile fall onto an hvac vent would you avoid using a shop vac with a bag and true hepa filte?
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User
7 years ago
last modified: 7 years ago
If you didn’t do that cutting wet, your saw generated thousands of free floating fibers within your house that need to be properly remediated. Yes you should be worried. Left alone, they were fine.
toxcrusadr
7 years ago
Not to get too anxious about it but the above post is correct, in the sense that extra subflooring now is not going to address any fibers that floated about the area while you were cutting.

Nothing you can do about what you were exposed to while cutting, and you will not die of that, but you can clean the area to remove residual dust now.

A one-foot square, four sdes, that's 4 linear ft. Not a huge amount of material and it was after all vinyl tile.

A wet wiping is probably a good idea followed by HEPA vac when it's dry. Whatever rooms are next to the room you worked in.

If you're really concerned you can get an asbestos air test after doing that. Oh, and change your furnace filter, for good measure.
DavidR
7 years ago
I missed the fact that you'd cut into it with a power saw. That does raise fibers, so you probably did inhale some. But I'll stick with what I said before, that real harm from asbestos requires repeated and prolonged exposure.

You could do as Green says and spend the big bucks for professional remediation, but if it were may place, I probably wouldn't, but rather would follow Toxic's advice.
yetile
7 years ago
SaltiDawg is a Troll and just pops into threads posting stupid comments to feed her mental illness.
User
7 years ago
Interestingly, the OP got the joke and even Liked the post.

However, you continue to disrupt threads and make personal attacks on a few folks that call you on it. (Time to attack your builder for some imaginary two-year-old defect. lol )