How to Get Asbestos Tested

If you’re living in an older home or you’re planning some new renovations, you may be concerned about the presence of asbestos in your home. Unfortunately, asbestos fibers are invisible to the naked eye. They can only be identified through asbestos testing. Which may leave you wondering how to get asbestos tested in your home. 

Luckily, there are varied ways to test for asbestos – but it’s not recommended to test for asbestos yourself. If you want to know how to get asbestos tested, it’s best to leave it to the professionals who know how to handle this harmful substance. 

Asbestos is known to cause lung disease, pleural plaques, asbestosis, and mesothelioma cancer if inhaled. As such, it’s crucial to know how to get asbestos tested in a safe and official manner. This is especially true since improperly collecting asbestos samples can lead to further distribution of the asbestos in your home.

To ensure you stay safe, here is how to get asbestos tested properly at your home. 

Once the asbestos removal contractor has identified areas of concern, they will carefully collect samples of the suspected material in a way that won’t disturb any asbestos fibers. These samples must then be sent to an accredited asbestos lab to be analyzed for asbestos.

Most labs use the Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM) technique to determine the presence of asbestos. This technique uses polarized light to analyze the mineral-specific properties in fibers at a microscopic level. If there is any asbestos present, this test will be able to detect it. 

PLM testing can even show what type of asbestos it is, and what percent of asbestos is in the material. 

In addition to PLM testing at the lab, airborne asbestos tests can be done in your home to ensure that it is safe to live in. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) is a test commonly used to check for airborne asbestos.

TEM takes less time than lab testing, and can help you determine if your house is currently liveable while waiting on the results of PLM lab tests. In the end, however, TEM testing cannot determine the culprit of your asbestos issue, so physical samples will always be needed in addition.