There are a lot of misconceptions when it comes to asbestos, and one of them is that its presence will be immediately evident in some way when you walk into a home or building. Unlike a gas leak or mold, there’s no obvious sensory indicator that there’s asbestos throughout the floors or walls. The best guess that could be made is a likely assumption of asbestos use based on the age of the building (or, more, the year it was built). The best course of action is to have a qualified asbestos expert test the concerning space and have a solid answer. However, it doesn’t dilute the curiosity around asbestos and what it actually looks like…

Asbestos is a dangerous material if it’s let out into the atmosphere. However, the aim is to dispose of materials that likely have, or are confirmed to have, asbestos in it to ensure particles aren’t at risk of being ingested or inhaled. With that, the removal of asbestos is a delicate job that needs expert handling (both for safety and to adhere to legal requirements) and safety at the forefront of the process, and the disposal component is not different. Here is how to safely and legally dispose of up to 10m2 of asbestos if you have it at a property you live at, work in or work on.

For a material that is now known widely to be extremely hazardous, it seems odd that it was only a few decades ago that it was used for the places we live, work, shop and congregate in a substantial way. By the time it became an illegal material to use, it was already part of many thousands of homes, public buildings and commercial spaces and has even been used in hospitals. To understand more about where asbestos might be present (based on the age of the place you are working on) it’s important to know when it stopped, and when it started, being used in Australia.

One material that’s had a lot of use throughout history is asbestos. As a lightweight, flexible, and durable material, asbestos was used in a variety of products and materials. There are many different kinds of asbestos for many different uses. However one cannot discount how utterly dangerous