As building materials go, asbestos used to be considered one of the most effective and most versatile. It was used as insulation, as a fire retardant, as soundproofing, and more, which meant that it could be found virtually anywhere. As scientific understanding of this material grew, however, this ubiquity turned out to be a bad thing, as asbestos was eventually proven to cause lung cancer and other respiratory problems. If you suspect that you have asbestos in your building, we at Double D Construction Services, Inc. encourage you to call our team to get professional asbestos testing to give you the information you need to make your indoor environment safe. In this article, we’ll provide a brief overview of how asbestos testing works.
- Air Sampling- One method of asbestos testing checks for fibers in the air using either Phase Contrast Microscopy (PCM) or Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). PCM gives a general gauge of the amounts of various fibers in an air sample, meaning that it’s a good way to determine the likelihood of asbestos being present, but TEM allows technicians to identify smaller particles with more precision.
- Building Material Sampling- Another technique we at Double D Construction Services, Inc. use in asbestos testing is Polarized Light Microscopy (PLM). With this method, we can use the unique properties of polarized light to analyze building material samples and determine the specific minerals present in them, allowing us to identify any asbestos that may be present.
- Soil and Water Sampling- A third type of asbestos testing uses a combination of the microscopy techniques mentioned above to analyze the soil and water at a particular location. Soil and water sampling is primarily used to determine whether any asbestos-ridden materials were dumped illegally.
If you suspect that you have asbestos on your property, we encourage you to enlist our asbestos testing team to find out for sure.