The thought of home renovation brings to mind certain imageries. Most of them are happy ones but few and far between, there are also the imageries of fear. I am talking about asbestos. So much has been said about it that asbestos instils fear in us the moment we see it.
Asbestos-related diseases have very long incubation periods
Don’t be mistaken! I am not saying that asbestos can attack you like the dengue mosquito. In fact, far from it, the incubation time for diseases like asbestosis and mesothelioma is something like 20-30 years. In other words, from the time you are exposed to asbestos, you can take something like 20-30 years to finally manifest symptoms of the asbestos-related diseases.
Why is asbestos a part of our homes?
So how does it all connect with home renovators? There is a recent statistic which suggests that a good number of carriers of the above diseases are home renovators. And why that may be so? Let me start by saying that asbestos was a prized produce in the days that succeeded the Second World War. It was something the construction industry could not do without up till mid 1980s, a time when the adverse impact of asbestos was first registered and its slow phasing-out began.
When does asbestos become a worry?
Tthere is a good chance that all those homes built during this period have a fair amount of asbestos somewhere or the other, and when an overambitious renovator takes the plunge himself, he opens himself to the many debacles of asbestos poisoning. Asbestos is not a worry till it is tampered with and it becomes part of your home’s air, coming in the way of your inhalation and ingestion. This said, the home renovators unintentionally do a lot of tampering.
The sources of asbestos at home
This brings us to the question- where can we expect to find asbestos at home? You can find it in vinyl floor tiles, corrugated sheeting for walls and roofs, eaves and guttering, carports and garages, exterior dunnies, fencing and brick cladding, among other places.
Dealing with asbestos
Once you do, rope in a licensed asbestos expert for dealing with asbestos. There is a particular way in which asbestos is disposed off. Do not try water-blasting, scraping, sanding, sawing, and drilling. This is not how you get asbestos off the road!
Asbestos can do a lot of damage long after you have forgotten your adventure with this material. It is wise to be on the guard and especially so if you are a home renovator.