Hello all,

I've followed numerous posts on this forum on the asbestos tile topic. I thought I'd add to that number and hopefully get some insight.

My husband and I bought a house built in '53, with possible asbestos tile in basement. We went through with our house inspector and he picked up a piece of "supposed" tile and told us to take it into the lab for testing.

It came back negative. So we hired a basement waterproofing company to fix the water issue in the basement. This was paid for by the seller of the house. Now, i am not 100% sure how they installed the drain. I know they either used a jackhammer or wet saw to dig into the concrete. They took out about two rows of tile along the entire basement, two rooms approx. 400sqft each. The tile that was left was in perfect condition so that makes me hopeful they used a wet saw and not a jackhammer.

Anyways, when we moved into the house we were sweeping and mopping up some leftover dirt and dust the workers left in the basement and I thought to myself, what will it hurt testing the tile one more time? Turns out it was asbestos, 2%, and the house inspector picked up the edging for us to test.

I freaked, had an abatement company come in. They started with preliminary air testing which came back with a zero fiber reading. I still wanted it gone so we hired them to remove it all and the mastic (which tested negative for asbestos). They left their huge commercial grade air filtering system in our basement overnight after they were done with their work as well. Air testing afterwards had zero fiber readings in basement as well as upstairs, with one reading in basement reading I would like to put this all behind me, but my husband and I have been coughing since we moved in this past fall. I got a chest xray which was normal, and my doctor assures me it's almost a wive's tale that the asbestos is ever released from the tile. That didn't make me feel better.. So far I have had my doctor, the owner of the abatement company, and the asbestos testing analyst assure me all is well and even spending the money to have the tile removed was unnecessary because of the high cost. My grandfather also told me to shut the h*ll up about it already because he installed his own asbestos tile in his basement back in the day and he's still kickin'.... :)

We even had the air ducts cleaned and installed a HEPA whole house air filtering system. The highest exposure was definitely when we first moved in and went to town cleaning up the waterproofing company's mess. They did however give it a once-over because there was muddy mopprints all over the tile.

I feel like there is asbestos floating through my heating/cooling system and constantly recirculating it and it's driving me bonkers.

I appreciate anyone who took the time to read through this short story.. I would appreciate any feedback/comments you have to offer. I'm hoping a 6 or so hour workday spent cleaning the possible dust up won't kill me before I hit 40. Nor the lingering dust that hasn't made it through the filtering system.. I did get passing air results though didn't I? Sigh, 4 months later and it still crosses my mind every day.