Identifying Asbestos Vinyl Flooring

Asbestos flooring was made into the 1980s though its heyday was the 1920s through the 1960s.

Identifying asbestos vinyl flooring.

This article describes sheet flooring products known to contain significant levels of asbestos. If you know when the building was built or renovated this might help you estimate when the tiles were installed. Vinyl floor tiles or sheet flooring were made or installed before 1986 should be treated as a floor covering presumed to contain asbestos or else have a sample tested and report the results here please. But the flooring companies aim wasn t so much to make the floor tiles fireproof as it was to make the tiles more durable.

Asbestos is a mineral that lends fireproofing qualities to any substance it is mixed with. Between the 1920s and 1960s asbestos was a popular material used in floor tiles. Gather information about the age of the tiles. Asbestos containing sheet flooring or resilient flooring product identification.

We describe sources of asbestos in older forms of sheet flooring including felt backed flooring rubber backed flooring and vinyl cushion backed resilient flooring products. For about 35 years flooring companies included asbestos when they manufactured the vinyl tiles. The flooring during this period was usually made in 9 inch squares and is quite a bit thicker than most of the modern vinyl tiles. Vinyl tiles with asbestos are all 12 12 or 9 9 tiles with asbestos.

Because asbestos was widely used before 1980 if you have flooring tiles that were installed before then you need to test a piece of the flooring to make sure it s safe. Our photo left shows armstrong excelon 12x12 vinyl asbestos flooring made in 1972 identified in our floor tile photo guide asbestos floor tile identification photos 1949 1959 detailed photo guide to asphalt asbestos and vinyl asbestos floor tiles and resilient flooring produced in 1900 1980. Asbestos in floor tiles. With that in mind here are the keys to identifying asbestos floor tiles.

However you re not completely in the clear because asbestos was a common ingredient in the mastic used to hold these flooring materials to the subfloor. In addition to the tiles themselves a layer of mastic a type of adhesive below the tiles is also likely to contain asbestos. Vinyl or asphalt tiles that have these colors in it have a high likelihood of asbestos fibers. Another time period that asbestos floors were popular in was between the years of 1920 and 1960.

T he flooring during this period was usually made in 9 inch squares and is quite a bit thicker than most of the modern vinyl tiles. Asbestos tiles can be difficult to identify because you can t see the asbestos in the tile. Keep in mind that the mastic used as an adhesive for these older tiles might also contain some asbestos. I don t recognize that exact flooring pattern jack and am guessing it s an early 1980s vinyl sheet flooring.