Is this wall board asbestos?

[hundysquisher]

https://goo.gl/photos/HLv5WgcCui9kmKuPA

Built in late 1960s or 70s I think.

Local test lab closed til Monday so I'm throwing myself at your feet.

 

[Deleted member 174758]

You can throw yourself at as many feet as you like - it isn't possible to tell from a photograph (or rarely from a visual inspection) whether or not a material contains asbestos. Where did it come from in the house? How dense is the board? Is it heavy?

BTW it looks to have been broken up during removal, so the damage (if any) has already been done and the fibres (if any) have already contaminated the building..... The advice is always to try to leave the suspect material in situ, document it and to encapsulate it (i.e. board over it, etc) if at all possible, not rip it out then ask questions afterwards. Possibly worth mentioning that many of us in the trade installed asbestos fireboards, etc and have shown no sign of ill health - yet. There is no way to know if we'll have problems in our old age though

 

[SammyInnit]

I did that asbestos awareness course for work a few months back and for the life of me I can't remember half of it but if I were to give consideration I'd say there's a strong chance it is, but without proper testing you can never be 100% sure.

 

[^woody^]

This is a UK site. It does not look like any common asbestos board that we would have, but it's best to ask on a US site.

 

[SammyInnit]

This is a UK site. It does not look like any common asbestos board that we would have, but it's best to ask on a US site.

It might not but given the date and the resemblance it has to white I would say it's worth the cost to check.

Only going on the basis it can do harm but then again, I've never been exposed to asbestos. If it's as bad as it sounds I'd prefer to avoid it.

As I said, I did that course and I think the UK tried to discourage it's use early on but you never know.