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Asbestos Surveys: The Things to Know

With research showing the deadly diseases associated with asbestos exposure, a number of laws have been passed over the years to ensure the safety of people in the community. One of the most significant pieces of law is Regulation 4, which relates to people’s duty to manage asbestos.

The regulation’s main application is to do with non-domestic properties and places responsibility on the “duty holder” to ensure they identify, manage and properly monitor asbestos in the building.

A definition of the term “duty holder” is outilned within the Approved Code of Practice 127. The definition in this code extends to employers and self-employed people if they are responsible for the maintenance of a non-domestic property. To summarise, if you control the maintenance of a non-domestic building, then by definition you’ll be a “duty holder”.

Asbestos surveys come into play here. Anybody deemed to be a “duty holder” must do inspections of the premises and typically most “duty holders” hire a specialist for this job. The results of these inspections must be recorded and maintained for the life of the premises. Any contractors on your premises have the right to view this register for their own safety.

The surveys that an independent specialist performs are outlined in the MDHS 100 Surveying Sampling and Assessment of Asbestos Containing Materials Guidance. These include:-

Survey of Location & Assessment

The aim of this survey is to find any asbestos on the property and assess its potential impact. Basically, it’s a presumptive survey.

Standard sampling

This survey is for assessing and identifying the suspect asbestos products. In this survey samples are taken of the suspect materials to determine whether they contain asbestos or not. If it’s a small job this test can be performed on site, but in a lot of cases samples need to be sent away.

Full access and ID survey

This survey is sometimes called a pre-demolition or refurbishment survey. The purpose of the survey is to study each of the products containing asbestos in the premises. Rather than take a few samples, in this case a full sampling program is done to identify in detail the levels of asbestos in the building and the extent of the material. Usually this survey takes place to work out whether a building needs to be demolished or whether a refurbishment will suffice.

Click the following link for more information about asbestos surveys.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 7:38 am and is filed under Lawsuit Lawyer Mesothelioma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.