Identify Asbestos Vinyl Sheet Flooring

Possible signs of asbestos mastic include discoloration and an oily texture.

Identify asbestos vinyl sheet flooring.

Between the 1920s and 1960s asbestos was a popular material used in floor tiles. Vinyl or asphalt tiles that have these colors in it have a high likelihood of asbestos fibers. We describe sources of asbestos in older forms of sheet flooring including felt backed flooring rubber backed flooring and vinyl cushion backed resilient flooring products. The most dangerous of these products is asbestos vinyl sheet flooring.

If black tar is adhering to the vinyl it is almost a 100 asbestos containing fiber product. Asbestos containing sheet flooring or resilient flooring product identification. Vinyl sheet flooring comes in large pieces and is usually cut to the size of the room and laid down in one piece. If your building was built before 1980 mastic mixed with asbestos may have been used to seal your tiles to the floor.

Like floor tiles vinyl sheet flooring is a long lasting and economical material and it also offers more aesthetic options to suit a homeowner s taste. Click here to read more. A vinyl sheet flooring that looks like the above has a high chance of asbestos. This type of flooring often has an asbestos backing that is considered friable and the fibres are easily released if the material is disturbed or damaged.

This article describes sheet flooring products known to contain significant levels of asbestos. Asbestos vinyl flooring was a durable and economical material that offered many aesthetic options to suit a homeowner s taste. One armstrong world industries vinyl resilient sheet flooring product thought to have been installed in 1967 was tested in a lab and found to contain 70 percent asbestos. T he flooring during this period was usually made in 9 inch squares and is quite a bit thicker than most of the modern vinyl tiles.

Always test for asbestos fibers before removing any older vinyl sheeting. As with any asbestos containing material acm the first step to finding asbestos in linoleum sheet flooring and vinyl tiles is. Such products some sold under the brand name solarian were installed as recently as 1980 long after governmental restrictions on asbestos were initiated. But before about 1978 in products that looked like this same material asbestos fibers were used as a strengthen material on vinyl sheet flooring backing.

Unfortunately vinyl sheet flooring manufactured with an asbestos backing poses a serious exposure risk when it is disturbed.