So are they doing just the one room or the whole house (whole ground floor?) for removing the bottom foot of drywall?
The one room I’m sure. That’s what was damaged and insurance is willing to pay for.
Interesting development…
I got the actual inspection report from the water mitigation guys, and the test says that asbestos is found in the drywall mud/texture compound, but that it’s < 1%, and the drywall has no asbestos itself.
There’s also an old vinyl or laminate floor in that room that we weren’t aware of (they carpeted straight over it!), so we’ve got an asbestos abatement contractor coming to test that tomorrow, and I’m going to give them the report that I got from the water mitigation crew.
What’s got me curious is that from everything I’ve read, if there’s less than 1% asbestos, then abatement isn’t actually required, or at least not the full-bore spacesuit style. Does anyone know anything about that?
I’d say that asbestos is nasty stuff. Safe when contained, and safe when mitigated by a trained contractor, but not something you want in your air. So if insurance is willing to pay the mitigation people to do the job right, I’d go for it.
If they come back with “sorry, not my job after all”, then I’m not sure what I’d do. I’d probably at least ask them how much it would cost to have the do their thing.
(Asbestos tile contained under a carpet isn’t going to cause any problems unless you remove the carpet, though.)
I would also think that asbestos disease (mesothelioma?) is more related to frequent/regular exposure. One episode of taking out drywall in a room or scraping up floor tile should not be significant. (Sort of like smoking, only deadlier) I look back on a 1990 drywall and floor renovation I did on my house built in 1962 and I guess I have to wonder whether it will come back to haunt me in a few decades when I’m pushing 90. Especially if the drywall mud was only 1% asbestos. the key would be to limit dust and clean it all up. Too late to find out now if there was any. At the time, nobody was thinking about that.
But I guess your problem is now that you know with your house, you can’t play dumb.
There is no safe amount of asbestos. As recently as 2018, sixty percent of workplace related fatalities in Western Canada were due to asbestos. This would be from workers exposed in the 80’s and 90’s. I have no doubt I have been exposed to ACM in my time working in the industry.
Chrysotile asbestos was used as an additive to drywall mud in the past. We test any drywall installed earlier than 1990, but it is mostly in homes built in the late sixties and early seventies. I have never had the drywall itself come back as positive, but the specialists we use have told me it does happen. Results are usually 1 - 2 percent. Four percent in drywall mud would be high.
The asbestos was added by hand to the mud as a perceived improvement by the tapers at time of install. This adds a factor of randomness. If there are any positive results I assume all areas are potentially ACM unless it can be shown the drywall is from a later install.
Some jurisdictions, such as Quebec, consider small amounts of asbestos such as less than one percent safe. Quebec was a major producer of asbestos, and when it started to be banned for use in Europe and North America, they started to aggressively market it in the developing world. The Canadian federal government used to maintain that Chrysotile asbestos was not actually harmful, and they may still. I consider this absolutely shameful and disgusting, its evil.
If you know what you are doing, you can probably remove and dispose certain asbestos materials safely without the extreme level of measures required by the jurisdiction’s health and safety regulations. This would most likely be illegal. The measures taken are at the level they are as workers are not perfect, nor is human knowledge.
Asbestos is extremely strong, flexible, soft, well insulating and fireproof. It is a miracle material and was used enthusiastically as such in countless applications. We know now it is also deadly, not immediately, but 20 or 30 years after exposure. Im not going to risk the health of anyone because some asshole bureaucrat in Quebec thinks one percent is okay.
Interesting because I watch Home & Garden TV which seems to be about 50% renovation shows (the other 50% is real estate sales shows). Every renovation seems to show the perps happily smashing down drywall and nobody mentions asbestos. It only seems to come up when looking at insulated outer walls or ceilings, and with old wrapped pipes. They trash walls in houses of all ages to create things like open concept kitchens and modernized bathrooms.
I heard of a factory where every time they drilled a hole in the wall it needed abatement because the outer cladding was made with plenty of asbestos.
This is actually recommended for that kind of flooring, as long as it is in good shape. It doesn’t shed asbestos fibers unless it gets broken up, which is what happens when you try to remove it. Leaving it in place and covering it is what you’re supposed to do if you can.