Asbestos Presence in 20th Century Buildings

Abstract

Asbestos is a naturally occurring mineral, useful for its high chemical resistance, its mechanical resistance and its insulating capacity. For this reason, it appears in building constructive materials, of very different types of construction and use. When we refer to old buildings we mean constructions of the second half of the 20th century. In Europe, America and many other places in the world, a lot of buildings built between 1960s and 1980s contain asbestos. It can appear in some construction elements or in some facilities elements. However, these asbestos properties have been set aside now, because scientific research has shown that asbestos is a dangerous substance that can cause a lot of irreversible respiratory diseases, most of them fatal, and other non-respiratory diseases, some of them fatal as well. All these dis-eases can appear many years after worker’s exposure to asbestos begins. Thus, asbestos has been and still being the cause of a very large number of serious occupational diseases and deaths. For this reason, asbestos was prohibited in a lot of countries. But after this prohibition, the problem of managing the previously used asbestos arose. Thus, this section analyzes the procedure to follow when we need to rehabilitate a building that may contain some element with this material or when we simply decide to demolish that construction. In fact, to diagnose the presence of asbestos inside the building is the first problem: asbestos is invisible and odorless, so its detection is not easy. Later, once its presence is verified, asbestos removal is the next problem: for this, there are very strict protocols to reduce asbestos health risk.