Asbestos News in 2017

15 Jan 2017

Asbestos News in 2017

The number of deaths caused by asbestos continues to climb. They are expected to hit a new record over the next few years as more and more people succumb to diseases caused by exposure to asbestos.


Unfortunately, experts expect the danger level to remain high for the next ten to fifteen years. The economy is beginning to recover from its downturn. As it recovers, more homeowners and business owners are conducting renovations and refurbishments on their buildings.  As a result, asbestos finds have risen by 80%.


The Health and Safety Authority (HSA) must be informed when a certain threshold of asbestos is found in a building to be demolished or refurbished. The amount of notifications received by the HSA rose from 164 in 2010 to 290 as of December 2016. This is the highest number of notifications since the mid 2000’s.


The concern is that many of the workers who were in the construction industry during the last asbestos boom were involved in new construction, and don’t have experience working with

asbestos.


Senior inspector at Health and Safety Authority, Darren Arkins says, “They’ve came away from that in the last number of years into refurbishment and a lot of these guys would never have seen asbestos. That’s an area of concern for us, because we have seen scenarios where stuff is uncovered on a job and the younger construction workers wouldn’t necessarily pick up on it.”


Asbestos is a problem in the residential and commercial sectors. Mr. Arkins says that more should be done to educate homeowners about the dangers of asbestos, and how to identify it. In the commercial sector, up to 50% of buildings inspected don’t have up to date surveys. Most commercial building owners wait until a major renovation to have their buildings checked for asbestos.


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