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stripouts.com.au

The strip-out, one sheet at a time

You cannot tell asbestos by looking

Queensland says you cannot tell whether a building material contains asbestos just by looking at it. This guide covers what a laboratory sample can answer, who may take it, and the two rules that apply where nothing has been tested.

General information, published by Dotto as a guide. Every rule below is stated for the state or territory whose regulator states it, and each sentence carries a link to the page it came from.

It is not recommended that you handle or remove asbestos yourself, and in some places the law goes further. That is the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency’s advice to householders. In the Australian Capital Territory any removal needs a licensed removalist, unless it is part of minor routine maintenance or other minor work. In Queensland a home owner must be trained before taking out more than 10 square metres of non-friable material, and only a removalist holding a Class A licence may remove friable material.

Ten square metres, and what stands on it

  1. The floor coverings
  2. The wet-area sheeting
  3. The wall sheetingYou are here
  4. The ceiling, and the void above it
  5. The eave sheet
  6. The board, and the lagging behind it

Ten square metres of non-friable asbestos: at a workplace, the most that needs no removal licence, in the licensing table of the national model demolition code

The wall sheet, third in the strip-out.

Looking does not settle it

Queensland states the first rule without hedging: you cannot tell whether a building material contains asbestos just by looking at it. Careful examination of a sample, using specialised microscopic procedures at a laboratory that holds accreditation from the National Association of Testing Authorities, is what confirms it. Queensland’s homeowner answers.

WorkSafe Victoria is just as direct: there is no simple test to identify asbestos, and where analysis is needed it must go to an approved laboratory, accredited by NATA or by the scheme that approved the laboratory. WorkSafe Victoria on identifying asbestos.

Queensland’s testing page carries a warning that fits this section exactly. A safety alert has been issued for near infrared handheld analysers used to identify asbestos containing materials. Queensland’s testing page. The same page, for the record, points at the other end of the scale: laboratories that analyse building materials can be found through NATA, and those laboratories will advise on how a sample should be taken and sent.

How small a sample answers the question

The Victorian asbestos service’s page on samples in the workplace says a piece no bigger than a 50 cent coin is enough, as long as the piece represents the material it was cut from. Taking asbestos samples, Victorian Government.

Small, though, is not the same as safe. Queensland’s page on the common locations of asbestos states the condition that sits on every sample: taking a sample of anything suspected to contain asbestos is itself hazardous, and should only be done by a competent person, with the analysis done only in accredited laboratories. Queensland on common locations. Safe Work Australia’s guidance defines the person who may do it: a competent person is someone who has acquired the knowledge and skills to identify asbestos and ACM from training, qualifications or experience. Safe Work Australia’s registers guide.

For a workplace, Queensland is more specific about who counts. Its registers page lists, among the people who may be considered competent to identify asbestos and ACM, someone employed by an organisation that NATA has accredited, under ISO 17020, for surveying asbestos. Queensland’s registers for workplaces.

The two rules that let you skip the test

The first is the assumption, and Queensland gives it as advice to the public: where materials have not been tested, assume they could contain asbestos and take adequate precautions before handling, removing or disturbing them. Queensland on common locations. The state’s renovator guide adds the plain version: if you are not sure whether a building material contains asbestos, play it safe and assume that it does, or seek advice from an asbestos consultant or other competent person, or have the material tested at a laboratory. WorkSafe Victoria asks the same of anyone unsure whether a house or structure contains asbestos: treat it as though it does until the site has been assessed.

At a workplace, the assumption is not a stopgap: Queensland states that if asbestos or ACM is assumed to be present at a workplace, it is taken to be identified there. Queensland’s registers for workplaces. The Victorian compliance code puts the duty on the person who manages or controls the workplace: where there is uncertainty on reasonable grounds about whether asbestos is present, or where areas that are inaccessible are likely to contain it, they must assume it is present or arrange for a sample to be analysed. The Victorian compliance code.

The second rule is a consequence of the first. When a workplace has no register, or a register that does not match what is about to happen, the work cannot simply start and wait for a test. The national guidance puts a survey before the register: before an asbestos register can be developed, a competent person has to inspect the workplace and identify the asbestos and ACM in it. Safe Work Australia’s registers guide. That is the next guide in the strip-out, and it is where the question of a sample stops being a household worry and becomes a step in a job: A shop or office strip-out answers to a register first.

What a test is not

This is not a place for improvised handling. Nothing in this guide is written as a method for cutting, breaking, wetting or bagging a sample, because those steps belong to the people the regulators license and train to do them, and because the safety line this site carries on every page says the same thing in one sentence. What a reader can take from the laboratory pages is the shape of the answer: a competence to take it, a NATA accredited laboratory to read it, and a report that says what the material is.

For the sheet itself, Safe Work Australia’s model code says cement sheet installed up to 1990 is likely to hold asbestos, bonded into the cement.

Where the answer is asbestos and the sheet has to come out, who may take it out is set by each state and territory. The Australian Capital Territory requires a licensed removalist for removal work, unless that removal is part of minor routine maintenance or other minor work; it has taken out the national exception for small non-friable jobs of 10 square metres or less. WorkSafe ACT’s asbestos page. The first guide in the strip-out puts the eight answers to that question side by side, each in its regulator’s own words.

What is never done to it, and where the load ends

  • Queensland’s asbestos site says not to saw, sand, scrape or drill holes in asbestos materials.
  • The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency says never to use high-pressure water, or an abrasive process such as scrubbing, sanding or grinding, on an asbestos cement roof or on any other asbestos material.
  • Queensland’s page on the health effects of asbestos gives the reason the disturbance matters: it is when asbestos is worked with or disturbed, and asbestos fibres are released, that the risk of developing an asbestos related disease is increased.
  • The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency states the rule for the load: all asbestos waste has to go to a landfill site that is licensed to accept it. New South Wales words the same rule for its own state: only a landfill licensed to accept asbestos waste may take it for disposal.