Vinyl tiles-Asbestos

[kaharrison9]

Evening All
Just very briefly been to look at a large kitchen floor i'll be tiling soon.
Under the old carpet there were approx 10' vinyl tiles laid
over what appeared to be Approx 4' vinyl tiles.
Looking through an asbestos book they mention a low level of asbestos can be found in vinyl tiles and can be difficult to decide which has or hasn't.
What do folk do when they come up against this instance.
I'm sure for everyones safety a proper asbestos check should be carried out but when reading the history on the forum of tiling where vinyl tiles are,many seem to have lifted without any thought about asbestos and seem to only be concerned about the black tar.
Does anybody always have vinyl tiles checked out?
Best to be safe
Cheers
Kev

[Alan.P]

Hi Kev, if you suspect the tiles are, or could be asbestos, contact your local authority, they will tell you what to do, asbestos IS a killer, overboard ? maybe, better safe than sorry.

[mikethetile]

when I worked for the council we had vinyl tiles checked for asbestos and removed by the asbestos removal contractors

all very costly

asbestos was put into tiles to prevent threm wearing so quick

its the dust that is harmfull so keep everything damp and try to keep the tiles in as big a lumps as possible

[kilty55]

very interesting wont be removing those in a hurry again

[SandyFloor]

I lifted loads of old vinyl tiles over the years. Don't have a clue if they had asbestos or not.

[Ken Bruty]

I'm fairly sure the more brittle of the themoplastic tiles have the highest content of asbestos, with the later more flexible having less or none at all.

[SandyFloor]

I'm fairly sure the more brittle of the themoplastic tiles have the highest content of asbestos, with the later more flexible having less or none at all.

Do you mean the ones with a string like mesh through them? Or is that mesh the actual asbestos?

[Ken Bruty]

Tbh Sandy, I've never noticed a mesh in themoplastic tiles e.g the marley/polyflor/armstrong tiles, they usually break up into jagged dusty pieces with a kind of layered texture, the only tiles I know of with a mesh, are the old krommenie/forbo tiles which aren't harmful at all and usually 2.5mm to 4mm thick. hope that helps.