Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Removed Asbestos Containing Floor Tile - Scared?
An aunt ped, an offer was made that would allow us to live in her house and take over ownership so we began renovations. We are currently not in the best financial situation so we decided to do the brunt of the work ourselves. We removed old (25+ years) deteriorating carpet and found beneath it many broken floor tiles and green soft rotted wood below. We decided we needed to replace the rotted board, but there was tile on top. What to do? What to do? "REMOVE IT!" We thought. So we pried up all the tile with putty knives. After wards we decided to look online for directions on removing the adhesive from the floorboards and lo and behold on one website there's a picture of our EXACT tile. Contains asbestos it says. So I was struck near panic and even though that was a month ago it still wells up now and then. We weren't living in the house, still have our apartment, and just went on the weekends to work on it but I think all and all we have had about 17-20 hours exposure to whatever we kicked up in the air with the tile. Whatever dust there was I cleaned up almost immediately because I have allergies. We wore no face masks, no protective clothing, nothing - as I was completely unaware that asbestos floor tile even existed (yes I'm an idiot). I've found a few similar posts of people freaking out about unintended asbestos exposure via removing old tile, and my one and only friend in the world apparently did the same damn thing so I'm not the only idiot in the world that may have set myself on the path to mesothelioma, but like the title says, I'm frightened. We had the tile tested and it came back 93% Vinyl, 7% asbestos and the adhesive somehow has no asbestos at all. I know what's done is done and there's nothing I can do now, but how worried would you be?
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