Asbestos is everywhere: How to minimize the risk
You own a building from anytime between 1900 and 2000? Chances are you will find asbestos in some of its construction materials… What can be done to avoid lawsuits?
Risks to workers’ respiratory health incurred from accidentally released asbestos fibers in the air are now well established.
Encapsulated or sealed asbestos fiber is neither illegal or dangerous. However, if any asbestos containing material (ACM) is abraded, cut, punctured or torn, then follows a risk for workers’ health. No one is allowed to expose a worker to dust from a damaged ACM.
Construction and maintenance personnel on your property are at risk.
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol helps clients evaluating asbestos related risk.
What to do when asbestos is present
Establishing an asbestos registry
RBQ requires building owners to inspect buildings dating from before May 20, 1999 and locate sprayed on and pipe thermal insulation possibly containing asbestos. Solroc provided real estate managers with hundreds of such registers or related asbestos studies.
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol has conducted hundreds of similar studies for clients who own property portfolios.
Producing a preventive management plan
An asbestos investigation must be done prior to any construction, renovation or maintenance work if drilling, cutting, tearing or removal is considered. Workers exposed to such work must use protective gear according to apprehended risk.
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol will map RISK AREAS with ACM and provide recommendation for appropriate safety levels.
Presale asbestos audit
During a purchase inspection, damaged heating duct insulation or other ACM are often observed. In such cases, there is an immediate risk to anyone on the premises, whether they are workers or not.
In such cases, Enviroc Groupe Fondasol can sample the materials at risk and formulate recommendations for their repair or encapsulation.
Asbestos preventive demolition plan
CSST requires any building demolition project to proceed with a thorough investigation of potential ACM. Solroc is providing this kind of construction expertise every day and assist real estate developers in Quebec.
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol has provided this service to numerous real estate developers in Quebec and beyond.
Protecting workers’ health
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol can perform required daily or final air sampling and counting in all risk areas, as per CSST standards.
Our support
Enviroc Groupe Fondasol is your expert laboratory forasbestos relatedstudies, material/air sampling, analysis, mapping and related recommendations. Reports are signed by qualified professional engineers and occupational work professionals.
ASBESTOS: why it is so important to prevent
Asbestos is the cause of nearly half of deaths related to occupational diseases in Quebec.
There is a latency period of 20 to 40 years for these diseases to appear. Recent deaths come from exposition in the 1970s and the 1980s.
The Quebec National Institute of Public Health has established that a large proportion of asbestos-related diseases are never declared. For instance, mesothelioma cases related to occupational diseases account for only 21.4% of all registered cases between 1975 and 2002.
Source: CSST, August 2012
Where do you find asbestos?
- Sprayed-on insulation
- Furnaces and heat ducting pipes
- Stuccos, plasters, gaskets
- Tile floors and ceilings
- Vermiculite
- etc.