I have a popcorn ceiling which may be asbestos, and my son scraped some of it with his toy, how do I clean it?
Question by xtra1230: I have a popcorn ceiling which may be asbestos, and my son scraped some of it with his toy, how do I clean it?
I live in an older rental home which has popcorn ceilings in all the rooms, and recently I had a certified asbestos technician come and take a sample of the popcorn ceiling to test if it contains asbestos, I’m still waiting for the results. Now, my little boy has scraped some of it onto the bunk bed and surrounding area, I am very worried if it does contain asbestos, how do I clean the room and the clothes around that area? I immediately removed my kids from that room.
Please advice me with sincere answers.
Worried mom~!
Best answer:
Answer by HyperDog
First, if the material does contain asbestos, it will be present in very small quantities, under 5%, and usually less. It is also present as primarily long, heavy fibers, not the short, dust-like particles that caused health problems like mesothelioma in asbestos workers.
Scraping the stuff off a ceiling doesn’t generally expose very much of it, nor does it produce much dust. If any of the fibers do get loose, they’re easily trapped in the mucus of the nasal passages, and very unlikely to get deep into the lungs the way the microscopic particles that abestos workers were exposed to did.
Also, in the asbestos workers who were affected, most of them worked around huge quantities of the dust without breathing protection.
I would just wash the bedding that the material fell on, wet mop any smooth areas, and vacuum up the rest. If you are really nervous about minute amounts of asbestos that might escape from the vacuum cleaner exhaust, just open a window in the room, and set up a fan to blow air out. If the vacuum is a cannister type, position it to blow the exhaust towards the window.
Of course, anybody in the business of removing asbestos will likely tell you that you should hire them, or one of their brethren to do a complete removal of the current spill, as well as to petition the landlord to remove the entire textured ceiling. But I assure you, those ceilings are not a health hazard, and small scrapes are not an emergency and there’s no need to call out the haz mat team.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
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