An asbestos-abatement company removed asbestos (in the form of insulation in the attic). The air quality tests following the removal show a “Concentration fiber/mL” of less than 0.01. I read that in many jurisdictions 0.01 is the safe limit. However, the typical amount you’d like outdoors or in a house without it is something like 0.0001 or less.
Assuming there is some asbestos fibers in the air, how can I clean the air in the house? Can simply open the doors and windows and clear the air that way? Assuming the fibers are airborne, might that reduce the concentration level by an order of magnitude?
Or are there companies that will literally suck out the bad air?
(I do plan on getting my air ducts professionally cleaned.)
Yes there are. They’ll come in, set up high powered HEPA filter/fans that will exhaust the (now clean) air to the outside. I’ll bet it’s expensive. While I have to assume that if you opened doors and windows and had fans to bring fresh air in, fans to send air out and fans to keep the air moving would probably reduce the amount, you’ll probably kick up alot of it in the process (back to unsafe levels).
You can buy HEPA rated filters a lot of places, often for under $100. Get one and set it running.
One other thing is to practice “damp dusting”. Get ready to dust your house, all surfaces, with a slightly damp dust cloth. Ordinary water is all you need. The cloth should be very slightly damp… almost dry. If it leaves a film, its too wet.
Do this 3-4 times over the next few weeks. What you are doing is trapping the particles as they settle. If you use a cloth that is too “wet” it just glues the particles down to the surface… until it dries. Use a damp mop on your hard surface floors.
This, combined with a HEPA Filter machine, that you move from room to room should lessen the levels to an amount more suited to your expectations.
(Note- I used to work as a conservationist in a museum, and this method is used to help reduce all microparticles… Many of the displayed artifacts were so deleicate that even dusting represented potential damage hazards. So we worked to eliminate dust at its source)
For the record, that’s most of what the asbestos abatement company was doing.
My father worked in that business for several years (though mostly industrial jobs), so I’m somewhat familiar with their procedures. They should have taped everything up into several layers of plastic, then set up fans that 1. negatively pressurize the space, and 2. constantly suck the air through giant HEPA-or-better filters. You’d just be paying again to have the same job done.
I hope this isn’t a wrong place to tell this,but my husband (who Is 82) worked for Johns Mansville for a couple of years blowing in asbestos insulation. He had no protection just kept blowing the stuff out of his nose. He is the only one out of a family of 10 who did not get any form of cancer, And he is in excelent health( Just finished roofing the barn with tin and is now putting on steel siding.
I lived in a house with Asbestos siding and insulation and non of us ever had cancer(One sister died of cancer but she smoked).
Thanks for the info Full Metal Lotus. In fact, I have two HEPA air filters and was planning on using them. I’m happy to know that they may have an effect. Thanks too for your suggestion about “damp dusting.”
VARNISHING FLOORS
I should also have mentioned that the carpets in house are all being removed and we are having the hardwood floors sanded and varnished. Someone mentioned that any airborne asbestos fibers might eventually settle on the wood prior to varnishing and the varnish would essentially trap the particles in a safe way.
Does this seem correct? If these fibers are trapped in the floor, can I assume that regular wear and tear to the floor won’t dislodge these fibers and release them into the air?
Also, and this is a bit off topic, but how does one normally clean the air after hardwood floor sanding anyway?
Finally, my air ducts will be high-pressure washed/sucked via a truck outside. The ducts will be sealed to no junk gets back into the house. Would this be effective in removing most asbestos fibers that may have been sucked into the vents?
I can’t imagine remnants of fiber ending up in the air as varnish on the floor wears down. Your looking at a super minimal risk being made slightly less risky for an exponential cost to eliminate it further. Feel free to take a damp cloth and wipe down your house. It’s only if you make it air borne that allows it to ruin your lungs. Every adult over 30 probably was in a school that exposed them to asbestos, and most of them are alive without scarred lungs.
Most professionals now use sanding machines that are connected by a hose to a central vacuum device, which sucks most of the dust into the vacuum, where they have bags & filters to collect it. But this is still only most of the dust – there is still a fair amount that floats around and settles on everything in the room and any connected rooms.
Everyone I know who has had a floor sanded had to do an extensive dusting & vacuuming job afterwards. If they didn’t cover the doors into nearby rooms completely with a taped-down dustproof cloth or plastic sheet, they had to do this in those nearby rooms, too. It’s just plain a messy job for a couple of days. But after that, you have a really nice floor to look at.
I’m not sure that a HEPA filter, as suggested above, will be sufficient. HEPA filters down to 0.3 microns. There are certainly asbestos structures larger than that, but they also come much smaller. This small size can cause analytical problems. The quick and dirty analysis method is called PCM, and only detects structures larger than 0.3 microns. There’s a slower, more expensive test called TCM that detects structures down to 0.0002 microns. If you’re filtering with HEPA, you’re removing all the large particles and the PCM test will show low concentrations but the TCM test will show only marginal improvement.
Don’t worry about asbestos in the varnish. One common way of reducing health risk is encapsulation. Even assuming the asbestos structures retain their potency upon emission after encapsulation (which I doubt), the emission rate will be very low.
Looking more at the HEPA filters, it appears they may be quite good at removing particles smaller than 0.3 microns and that 0.3 microns is only the diameter used to qualify as HEPA. I would still caution against relying on them without consulting a qualified air/asbestos guy. HEPA filters may not be as efficient at removing fibrous asbestos particles.
I grew up in (meaning I lived in for 12 years) an old house that had a oil burning furnace (converted from coal burning) that was wrapped in asbestos insulation, as well as all the steam heat pipes that led from it, in the basement.
As kids, we would “play” with it. We would smartly wack the insulation with a handy stick or pool cue, and giggle about the little “poof” of chalky looking material that would float off.
