Sheet Vinyl Flooring Asbestos Paper Backing

Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring can be more dangerous to remove than tiles if proper precautions are not practiced.

Sheet vinyl flooring asbestos paper backing.

Manufacturers often made this type of flooring with a friable asbestos backing which means mineral fibers are easily released into the air if the sheet flooring is disturbed or damaged. Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring poses a significantly greater asbestos exposure risk than floor tiles or wallpaper. Never worked with asbestos before maybe i ll use a paper filter. It also was installed over tongue and groove wood floors particleboard and plywood.

The glue applied to the back of some vinyl tiles to make a pressure sensitive adhesive is made from organic resins. Asbestos was widely used as a filler in both asphalt based and some vinyl based floor tiles of varying thicknesses and extending to some thin flexible self adhesive backed tiles as well as some sheet flooring. Vinyl sheet flooring comes in large pieces and is usually cut to the size of the room and laid down in one piece. The backing of the vinyl sheet didn t crumble or anything like that but it did separate when i ripped the sheet off the floor.

The removal procedures described in this publication address the removal of asbestos backed sheet vinyl only if. The backing may be felt or highly filled paper made from wood pulp and calcium carbonate. 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. Examples of armstrong linoleum flooring linowall wall covering.

My concern is that there may be asbestos behind the sheet vinyl perhaps in the paper backing or glue adhesive. Asbestos vinyl sheet flooring has two layers a top layer of vinyl and a bottom layer made from paper that contains asbestos. High gloss surface vinyl sheets or vinyl tiles have an additional polyurethane coating applied at the end of the process. He said that asbestos in flooring was more in the 1950s and thought that the sheet vinyl was probably a replacement floor anyway.

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. We are told that the paper layer can contain from 40 to 70 percent asbestos. Asbestos backed sheet vinyl flooring was commonly installed in many ways including over hardwood softwood and concrete floors.