Artex - Asbestos

[xscope]

I am currently renovating my kitchen, and have a plasterer coming to skim the walls/ ceiling.

The ceiling is Artex, and the plasterer has asked me to knock the points off.

I thought, I know, I'll try the sander.

Anyway, after about 5 minutes, and a huge cloud of dust, realised that sanding probably wasn't a good idea.

Did a quick google search on Artex removal and found, to my horror, that, up until the 80's asbestos was used in Artex and that removal is a specialist job.

I have no idea when this Artex was applied, - I'm guessing early 80's.

I wasn't wearing any kind of dust mask etc.

Do I have any thing to really worry about?

[The Medway Handyman]

They stopped using asbestos in 1984 so its borderline.

It was only 3 - 5% asbestos & you had 5 mins exposure, so it doesn't seem like much to me.

Depends how old you are I guess. The ill effects if any take 25+ years to kick in.

[xscope]

.......well, I'm 36, so I'd like to be around in 25 years

[NT]

The people dying in large numbers were doing that day in day out for decades.

NT

[Peter Parry]

It isn't a "specialist job" despite what the cowboy asbestos industry might say.

No. Asbestos injury is very strongly dose/time related. If you had done that every day for 20 years _then_ you would have something to worry about.

[js.b1]

To be honest, why not pull it down?

- You just need to take it to an approved waste site

- Then replace with small sheets of plasterboard etc

If this ceiling is below your roof (leanto kitchen) then you will need to bring insulation up to current regs which is 280mm, if there is not enough space then use PIR foam or that wonderfully good but expensive Spacetherm (aerogel sheet).

Not ideal, wear N95 face mask, wipe down surfaces; same as you would with glass fibre or any other irritant.

Removal of artex ceiling or chrysotile is not a specialist job. You just have to put it at an approved site, nothing more.

[The Medway Handyman]

Or simply board over it?

[NT]

Why do either? if all it needs is plastering

NT

[nightjar]

I've got a bus pass and I intend to be around in 25 years time.

When I was a kid, my mother had a pad of asbestos on her ironing board to rest the iron on - one that was always rather fibrous around the edges. As a young man, I changed many asbestos brake shoes, brushing the dust out of the brake drums. Most people my age were exposed to asbestos routinely. It was even used as a cigarette filter material in the 1950s, although I've never been a smoker, so that wouldn't affect me.

While there have been a few isolated cases of people getting asbestos related illness on limited exposure, it is usually related to long, regular exposure to high doses and probably involving blue or brown asbestos. By the

1980s, it is very unlikely that anything other than white asbestos would have been used in building materials. While that is not entirely risk free, it does seems to be much less hazardous.

Colin Bignell

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember xscope saying something like:

Not after you're dead, no.