General information, not safety or legal advice. Asbestos rules are set by each state and territory; the national agency keeps a list of the organisations in each one that deal with asbestos.
What a survey is for
The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency, the national agency, gives a survey four jobs.
- To give accurate information on where asbestos materials are, what type they are and what condition they are in.
- To judge how likely each material is to release fibres, and whether anything needs to be done about it.
- To help meet legal requirements, including the need for asbestos registers and asbestos management plans. Safe Work Australia’s guide to registers is written for workplaces.
- To find every asbestos material that has to come out before demolition or refurbishment begins.
For a home, the agency says a survey should always be done before any renovation starts.
The parts, one by one
Reports differ in layout. The parts below are the ones official guidance names, in the order a careful reader might take them.
Who did the survey
The agency calls a survey a specialised task needing training and experience. It says people from several fields may be competent to do one, among them occupational hygienists, building surveyors, asbestos assessors, environmental health professionals and hazardous materials consultants, provided they have extra training and experience in identifying and sampling asbestos materials. Safe Work Australia’s registers guide notes that the ACT allows only licensed asbestos assessors to identify asbestos.
What was not assessed
Safe Work Australia’s example register, written for workplaces, has a line for areas not assessed during the survey, with an explanation of why. For a home report, this is the line that tells you where the report’s silence means “not looked at” rather than “nothing found”.
Identified, or assumed
A material can appear in a report because a laboratory confirmed it or because the surveyor assumed it. Queensland’s guidance says you cannot tell by looking, and that a NATA accredited laboratory can confirm it by examining a sample under a microscope. SafeWork NSW puts the working rule plainly: “Treat all suspected asbestos as asbestos until test results confirm otherwise.” The register guide likewise records the date each material was identified or assumed to be present.
Location and type
Safe Work Australia’s example asks each entry for its location and type: the product (such as a cement sheet or vinyl tiles) and the mineral. Queensland’s Work Health and Safety Regulation names six asbestos minerals and gives a colour for three of them: grunerite or amosite (brown), chrysotile (white) and crocidolite (blue).
Friable or non-friable
This word decides who may remove the material, and it has its own note: friable and non-friable in plain words.
Condition
The example register describes condition as a state of deterioration, giving examples such as weathering, cracks, peeling paint and material lifting. Condition matters because the agency says non-friable materials can become dangerous when they are disturbed, damaged or deteriorating.
A risk rating
Some reports grade each material. The agency’s National Guide for Asbestos Surveys uses a model from the Victorian Asbestos Eradication Agency that rates risk on four factors (condition, friability, how likely it is to be disturbed, and a building rating) to give high, medium or low, each with recommended actions. Adopting the National Guide is not mandatory, so not every report will use it.
What it recommends
The agency’s advice for householders runs in two directions: leave material that is in good condition undisturbed and undamaged; where it is broken or weathered, or work is likely to disturb it, get professional help to remove it.
Another paper you may see in Queensland
A report finds asbestos; a clearance certificate comes after licensed removal. In Queensland, a clearance inspection checks that an area is safe for normal use once licensed removal is complete; it must include a visual inspection and may include air monitoring. The certificate can be issued only if no visible asbestos contamination remains in the removal area or the area around it and, where air was monitored, the fibre level is below 0.01 fibres/ml. On domestic premises, the licensed removalist is responsible for making sure the inspection is carried out.
If a line in your report is unclear, the national agency says an asbestos professional can assess the material and give you guidance on how to manage the risks.