If you are young and new to buying a home, you may not be familiar with asbestos. While there are many warnings regarding asbestos around, there are many warnings around for a wide variety of things and you may be of the belief that many of these things are not actually harmful and are just subject to a lot of different paranoid people. You may be wondering if asbestos is part of this paranoia as well or something that you should seriously be concerned with. This article will shed some light on asbestos and how concerned you should be regarding it.
What is asbestos and how concerned should you be with it?
Before there were warnings about it, asbestos was a commonly used home insulation component. Using asbestos in insulation was cheap, efficient, fire proof, and thus beneficial for many reasons for a home. As time passed, however, a number of health claims were tied to asbestos and there is evidence that asbestos lead to cancer when inhaled. While asbestos is behind sheet rock and not easily inhaled, any type of construction would leave it exposed and subject to inhalation by people.
Most homeowner will avoid asbestos by any means necessary. In addition, removing asbestos is costly and burdensome, particularly if walls need to be removed to access it. The presence of asbestos will significantly decrease the value of a home and it is therefore important that a person buying a home test for the presence of asbestos before buying a home. A home inspector will perform special asbestos testing to help insure your home is asbestos free.
Asbestos Testing 