Asbestos Vinyl Flooring

Vinyl floor tiles or sheet flooring were made or installed before 1986 should be treated as a floor covering presumed to contain asbestos or else have a sample tested and report the results here please.

Asbestos vinyl flooring.

Even some of the early peel and stick tiles used asbestos as the main ingredient. When vinyl asbestos flooring is crumbling or damaged it is considered friable. 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. Asbestos containing sheet flooring or resilient flooring product identification.

An example would be a floor slab made from asbestos cement. Asbestos backed sheet vinyl flooring was commonly installed in many ways including over hardwood softwood and concrete floors. Asbestos is a mineral that lends fireproofing qualities to any substance it is mixed with. In this case it needs to be removed very carefully to avoid asbestos exposure.

For about 35 years flooring companies included asbestos when they manufactured the vinyl tiles. Asbestos was used in vinyl wallpaper from the 1920s and in the vinyl floor tiles and sheet flooring that rose to prominence in the 1950s. 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. But the flooring companies aim wasn t so much to make the floor tiles fireproof as it was to make the tiles more durable.

Our photo left shows armstrong excelon 12x12 vinyl asbestos flooring made in 1972 identified in our floor tile photo guide asbestos floor tile identification photos 1949 1959 detailed photo guide to asphalt asbestos and vinyl asbestos floor tiles and resilient flooring produced in 1900 1980. I don t recognize that exact flooring pattern jack and am guessing it s an early 1980s vinyl sheet flooring. A majority of the vinyl flooring made before 1986 contained asbestos in the tiles or in the backing materials. Unfortunately vinyl sheet flooring manufactured with an asbestos backing poses a serious exposure risk when it is disturbed.

It also was installed over tongue and groove wood floors particleboard and plywood. What are asbestos floor tiles. The removal procedures described in this publication address the removal of asbestos backed sheet vinyl only if. This article describes sheet flooring products known to contain significant levels of asbestos.