By Gary Williams
If the flooring in your vintage trailer was installed between 1952 and 1986, it’s very likely to contain asbestos. This applies to sheet flooring as well as tiles. There are some clues that may be helpful in determining whether your floor covering contains asbestos. I will share some that I have found in professional flooring forums, but the best thing to do before you go tearing it up is to have it tested. Home improvement box stores and other online retailers sell lab test kits. You use the kit to send a small sample to the lab, and they promise results in about a week.
The danger of asbestos is primarily caused by inhaling dust. Old tile underfoot is not as big a concern as long as it is sound and not crumbling. This means that just having the tile is not the problem; when you start scraping, grinding, or sanding, you expose yourself to the fibers. And doing so in the confines of a small travel trailer makes things worse.
The primary danger of asbestos arises from inhaling its dust, which can lead to severe health problems. When asbestos-containing materials are disturbed or damaged, tiny fibers become airborne and can be easily inhaled. These fibers can lodge in the lungs and remain there for a long time, causing inflammation, scarring, and, over time, serious respiratory issues. Prolonged exposure to asbestos dust is linked to diseases such as asbestosis, a chronic lung disease that causes shortness of breath and a persistent cough, and mesothelioma, a rare and aggressive cancer of the lining of the lungs, chest, or abdomen.
Please don’t do what I did.
Being ignorant of the flooring/asbestos situation, I naively cut, scraped, and yanked out the old flooring of my 1967 Aristocrat LoLiner. A couple things that might have been in my favor are that the flooring was cushion vinyl and that the backing was black paper. Apparently, in this kind of flooring, asbestos was most likely to be found in the backing and then most often in the “upgraded” version that used a tougher, off-white backing instead of the black paper. Also, I soaked the backing with water to help soften the adhesive, which might have helped hold down dust. Plus, I was working on the flatbed and not in an enclosed box.
NEVERTHELESS, I would never have done this if I had done a little research first.
So what should you do?
The safest approach is to leave the floor in place and cover it with the new floor. Of course, this would require the old floor to be sound and flat (good luck with that in an old trailer…) And you would also want to avoid the temptation to sand down any lumps before laying the new tile on top. Another option would be to lay a thin subfloor, like MDF or Masonite, over the old floor to provide a smooth gluing surface.
If you test the old floor and it comes back safe from asbestos, have at it. If it fails the test, and you can’t cover it, you really should contact an asbestos removal company.
Here are a few things I have learned from floor covering forums and an excellent resource called InspectAPedia
- Asphalt-based floor tiles pre-dated vinyl-based floor tiles and usually had much darker background colors.
- The 9-inch predominantly-black and predominantly-beige tiles almost certainly contain asbestos. These would be from the 1950’s and 1960’s.
- The nine-inch square tiles are the most likely to contain asbestos. This size was more common before 1960, and the 12-inch became more prominent after 1960.
- Asphalt asbestos tiles were generally darker in color because of the black pitch in the asphalt. Vinyl asbestos tiles could be lighter colors.
- Asbestos floor tiles were sold in a variety of patterns and designs, and the design pattern alone is insufficient to definitively determine whether your flooring contains asbestos.
- If you notice any discoloration on your tiles, this could be an indication that they are asphalt tiles that likely contain asbestos. The discoloration is a result of oil leakage from the asphalt.
- In the 1960s, Armstrong introduced hydrocord as their “better” backing for sheet vinyl. Hydrocord was made from asbestos, it was off-white in color, about 1/16” thick.
This article was originally published in issue #76 of the Vintage Camper Trailers magazine.
