Using a Mobile Phone App to Identify and Assess Remaining Stocks of In Situ Asbestos in Australian Residential Settings.

Matthew Govorko,Lin Fritschi,Alison Reid

doi:10.3390/ijerph16244922

Abstract

Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) were used extensively throughout much of the 20th century and can still be found in many Australian homes. Therefore, we developed a mobile application (“app”), called ACM Check, which guides users through a home inspection to identify and assess certain types of in situ ACM. A cross-sectional study was conducted using the app to collect data on the type and condition of in situ asbestos in Australian residential settings. Since being released in June 2017, we have received data for 702 home inspections. Of these, 578 (82.3%) houses contained a total of 1895 in situ materials categorised as positive for asbestos by the app. The most prevalent ACMs were used for the backing board to electrical meter boxes (50% of homes), eaves and soffit linings (44.2% of homes), and fencing (28.1% of homes). While the majority of ACMs were categorised as ‘very low’ or ‘low’ priority for removal or remediation, 6.6% of all ACMs were considered to be of ‘high’ priority. Mobile apps offer a platform to help increase people’s awareness of possible health hazards found in the residential environment, such as asbestos, while also being used to collect data for public and environmental health research.

Highlights

Asbestos is a commercial term encompassing a family of naturally occurring fibrous silicate minerals with a crystalline structure
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how a mobile app can be used to estimate the prevalence and condition of Asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) remaining in the Australian residential environment
The majority of in situ asbestos was located outside the home with flat asbestos-cement sheeting used as the backing board to electrical meter box, flat asbestos-cement sheeting used for eaves, and corrugated asbestos-cement sheet fencing being the most frequently detected ACMs

Summary

Introduction

Asbestos is a commercial term encompassing a family of naturally occurring fibrous silicate minerals with a crystalline structure. This includes the three most commercially significant asbestos fibre types, chrysotile, crocidolite and amosite, as well as actinolite, anthophyllite and tremolite. Australia mined asbestos as early as the 1880s and manufactured asbestos cement products from the 1920s until the late 1980s [6,7]. The asbestos cement manufacturing industry accounted for 60% of all production (i.e., mining of raw asbestos) and 90% of all consumption (i.e., consumption equals production plus imports minus exports) of asbestos fibres in Australia [7,8]

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