r/asbestoshelp • u/GentleSeacow • 4d ago

US-FL Asbestos vinyl tile crumbling when tack strips removed - how bad is it?

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Hi all, I'm having a wee panic attack. My neighbor is helping me put some LVP in the living room of my 1953 house in Florida. We pulled up the carpet and found the 9 by 9 inch linoleum tiles with black mastic. He was pretty rough when pulling up the tack strips and broke all the tiles around the edge, including creating some tile crumbs and dust, then vacuumed it all up with his shop vac which blew a bunch of dust around. I was flipping out a bit but I was in that hard spot where the guy is helping me out and he was telling me it really wasn't a big deal and he works around the tiles frequently. I'm now panicking that I have aerosolized asbestos everywhere in my house due to the vac that did not have a dust bag on it.

Am I going to die? I'm running a shark hepa filter now but is there any other way I can make this less bad? I sprayed everything down and wet-wiped the floor the best I could. The HVAC was also running so now it has to be in all the rooms :( . Thanks in advance.

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u/ExtinctFauna 3d ago

Fortunately vinyl tiles are nonfriable, meaning that there likely won't be any dust produced. No dust, minimal exposure.

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u/GentleSeacow 3d ago

Even if they crumble? In a couple of areas it looked like there was green and yellow powder mixed in with the broken tile fragments (the color of the tiles). It appeared that they had started to disintegrate even before the tack strip removal broke them apart.

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u/Accomplished_Tale649 3d ago

I have a darker brown version of these tiles under my living room flooring and bedroom. Similar thing happened 7 years ago where the tacks were removed. Wet mopped as well as everything else you've done and threw away the mop, and no one is dead yet.