Asbestos Ceiling Tile Glue

When you remove that floor covering to make way for new flooring you may encounter the mastic and wonder whether it is safe to remove the main concern surrounding this question is that black mastic often contains asbestos.

Asbestos ceiling tile glue.

Asbestos is a mineral that occurs naturally in the environment that is made up of long thin fibers that look similar to fiberglass. Asbestos exposure may pose serious health risks. Found in many manufactured products prior to the mid 1980 such as pipe insulation ceiling and floor tiles paints caulking fire resistant clothing and brake pads. Roofs asbestos was a common ingredient in plastic cements and sealants for rooftops.

These sound dampening tiles typically use asbestos with amphibole fibres occurring as columnar crystals which includes crocodilite and amosite. Armstrong produced the excelon tile series beginning with a plastic asbestos floor tile series in 1954 referring to the product as vinyl plastic asbestos floor tiles beginning in 1955 and vinyl asbestos tiles from 1957 to 1980. If asbestos tiles are covered with carpeting or a floating floor made of wood bamboo cork linoleum or vinyl along with the appropriate vapor. A suspended ceiling is more likely than other types of ceilings to contain asbestos tiles.

Of the two. Resilient sheet flooring containing asbestos was also produced finding wide use as early as 1968. In ceiling tiles asbestos is most commonly used for reducing the amount of noise that spreads from one room to another. But then asbestos was found to be a health hazard.

Asbestos adhesive was used for asphalt flooring tiles and vinyl or linoleum sheet tile because it strengthened the flooring and made it more durable. Asbestos was also a common ingredient in some mastic adhesives used for glue up application of ceiling tiles. What most people tend to do with asbestos tile is cover it and forget it partly because professional abatement is so expensive and partly because the risks with tiles in good condition are low. Black mastic also known as cutback adhesive was commonly used to glue flooring tiles down.

Common in homes built in the 20th century black mastic was used as an adhesive for ceramic tile linoleum and other flooring materials. Ceiling tiles were often glued in place using asbestos based glue pods which can become brittle over time and release many toxic asbestos fibers into the air when disturbed. Asbestos may have been used in the ceiling tile tiles and in lay in ceiling tiles in suspended ceilings in the tile body or in paper facing or backing on the ceiling tiles. These types of ceilings are also referred to as dropped ceilings or acoustic ceilings they are created by suspending a framework from the roof or upper floor and inserting ceiling tiles into the open spaces thereby creating a space between the ceiling and upper floor or roof.

Asbestos in ceiling tiles.