Sheet Vinyl Flooring Asbestos Paper Backing

Make sure to cut all the way down to the floor so your sample includes flooring backing and adhesive.

Sheet vinyl flooring asbestos paper backing.

It is sheet vinyl with a paper type backing. Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring poses a significantly greater asbestos exposure risk than floor tiles or wallpaper. Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring has two layers a top layer of vinyl and a bottom layer made from paper that contains asbestos. The house i live in was supposedly built in1990.

I started removing old flooring in the bathroom when upon an internet search on how to i started seeing articles about asbestos in vinyl flooring. He said that asbestos in flooring was more in the 1950s and thought that the sheet vinyl was probably a replacement floor anyway. Examples of armstrong linoleum flooring linowall wall covering. Never worked with asbestos before maybe i ll use a paper filter.

With a utility knife and while wearing rubber gloves cut a one inch long 1 8th inch wide sliver of sheet vinyl flooring. Such products some sold under the brand name solarian were installed as recently as 1980 long after governmental restrictions on asbestos were initiated. 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. Sheet vinyl flooring should be removed to avoid or minimize disturbance of the asbestos containing backing.

The backing would be one suitable for use as a surface covering for example a felt perferably a rubber bonded asbestos backing a vinyl sheet backing a cellulosic felt or other backing which lendsitself to surface covering applications. Unfortunately vinyl sheet flooring manufactured with an asbestos backing poses a serious exposure risk when it is disturbed. Manufacturers often made this type of flooring with a friable asbestos backing which means asbestos fibres are easily released into the air if the sheet flooring is disturbed or damaged. We are told that the paper layer can contain from 40 to 70 percent asbestos.

Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring can be more dangerous to remove than tiles if proper precautions are not practiced. Probability of asbestos in sheet flooring in a 1990 home. My concern is that there may be asbestos behind the sheet vinyl perhaps in the paper backing or glue adhesive. This will entail peeling the sheet vinyl from the flooring beneath if the backing does not separate in the process or removing the sheet vinyl in sections with the underlayment attached.

My father wasn t particularly concerned about this when i asked him. Remove a piece of floor molding or a floor heat register to access an edge of the sheet vinyl flooring.