Asbestos is a health risk when extremely fine particles become airborne and are inhaled.
If you own a home or commercial building that was constructed prior to or during 1980s, you may need to contact the appropriate services to help remove your home or business of this harmful material. Asbestos Removal companies like One Way Environmental Solutions will commit to making sure your property is safe and asbestos-free. Asbestos removal companies should not be contacted until you are absolutely sure your building has asbestos.
The first step should be to contact an environmental consulting firm, who will come and take samples and send them to a lab for analysis.. It is at this point that you should look into asbestos removal companies. Asbestos removal companies will work with the environmental consulting firm to properly remove the material. An important thing to note is that, depending on what type of material contains asbestos, it can become airborne if disturbed, so it is best to leave it alone after calling a professional. Asbestos removal companies are not fully done their job until the environmental consultant says that the property is fully cleared of the material. They do this by taking final clearance samples and inspecting the work done in order to give you full peace of mind that your home or business is safe, and that all the asbestos has been properly and completely removed.
These respirable fibres cannot be seen with the eye, but they can enter and become lodged in the lungs, where they may stay and develop into a disease.
The fibres are usually:
The presence of asbestos materials in a building does not necessarily create a health risk. While the materials are undisturbed and in sound condition, they will not generate airborne respirable fibres or create a health risk.
The likelihood of any particular person developing an asbestos-related illness depends on a number of factors, including:
Asbestos health effects
The people at most at risk of exposure to asbestos fibres are those people more likely to frequently undertake repairs, renovations and other work which can generate the release of asbestos fibres into the air.
While the risk to health increases with the number of fibres inhaled and with frequency of exposure, no safe level of asbestos exposure for lung cancer or mesothelioma has been identified. All types of asbestos can break into fibres so small that once they get into the air, they can remain airborne and be inhaled into the lungs, making it difficult for the body to remove them. This has been known to cause asbestosis, mesothelioma, pleural plaques and lung cancer.
Asbestosis
It is difficult to distinguish from other causes of interstitial fibrosis and only confirmation of exposure to asbestos or detection of unusually high numbers of asbestos fibres in the lung is considered conclusive evidence of this disease.
A cancer of the lining of the pleura (outer lung lining) or of the peritoneum (the lining of the abdominal cavity).
Lung cancer
Lung cancer is relatively common among the general public and is the cancer most frequently associated with asbestos.
Tumours grow and eventually obstruct airways.
No characteristics specify a lung cancer as being caused by asbestos – we cannot distinguish a cigarette lung cancer from an asbestos lung cancer or another lung cancer.
Smoking multiplies by 10 the risk of death due to lung cancer for asbestos workers.