The 3 Types of Asbestos Removal

Hey folks, Pete Ferrante here. Welcome to my new informational series where I look to help you navigate the waters of environmental abatement and hazardous material removal.

I’ll be taking a sort of layman’s, easy to approach fashion to these questions to provide as much value to you as I can.

In our first series, we’re diving deep into asbestos removal to answer any potential questions you may have. In part three, I’ll be discussing what you need to know about the categories of asbestos removal.

Pete Ferrante is the President and CEO of FERRO Environmental. He specializes in full spectrum abatement and remediation — such as asbestos and soil remediation — and is committed to bringing the top industry talent to his clients’ projects. The result? FERRO regularly appears as a PROFIT 100 Company in Canada. He also sits on the Board of Environmental Abatement Council of Ontario (EACO) and the Toronto Construction Association’s Environmental Committee.

Check out the rest of the series on Asbestos Removal!

• Understanding Ontario’s Asbestos Removal & Disposal Regulations
• Explaining the Danger of Asbestos
• How Much Does Asbestos Removal Cost?

The following is an edited transcript.

The 3 Types of Asbestos Removal

Not all asbestos is created equally — what are the different categories of asbestos that property owners need to be aware of?

Asbestos abatement is broken up into three types:

• Type 1 – 1 to 10 square feet
• Type 2 – 11 to 100 square feet
• Type 3 – 100+ square feet

Under Ontario regulations, you need to be certified to remove anything over a Type 2.

Ontario Asbestos Abatement Standards: 253W and 253S

From there, we operate under two standards in Ontario: 253W, which is an asbestos worker; and 253S, which is a supervisor.

In order to perform Type 3 operations within the province, you must have your 253W. And, you must have successfully passed your 253W course, you can not just have taken that course.

For 253S, you have to successfully pass the supervisor’s course. Only someone with a 253S can supervise people with 253W.

That’s the long way of saying you can do some of the smaller stuff on your own and some of the more basic stuff — like gaskets, filters, and small amounts of asbestos — provided that you do your homework, protect yourself properly and protect the people around the site properly.

You can certainly do that.

When Should You Use a Professional for Asbestos Removal?

Anything Type 2 or more, I highly recommend using a professional.

There’s a series of steps that need to be taken. There is containment that needs to be set up. Importantly, negative pressure needs to be established within those containments.

Basically, negative pressure allows air only into the enclosure. Air cannot escape that closure without going through HEPA filters before it escapes.

You need to know how to do that properly.

The last thing you want is to build up back pressure or to create positive pressure and then the next thing you know you’re spewing asbestos dust out into the common area or wherever you happen to be doing the work –like your home — that sort of thing.