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Exposure to Asbestos from one day of scraping artex

AHarr
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Hi,

Me and my wife are absolutely going out of our minds with worry. We scrapped the stipples off of some artex ready for a plasterer to plaster over. We didn't wear any protective gear. We were scrapping for about 4 hours and only for one day. We opened the window for ventilation. I did most of the scraping and my wife hoovered up. We've now found out that the artex most likely contained asbestos - probably the white asbestos.

We're now petrified that we might have signed our death warrant for lung cancer in years to come. My partner also has some scarring from past pnumonia from many tears back. What's the likely hood that we increased our risk of getting it?

Thank you so much in advance. We're so, so worried.

Kind regards,

A

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    Asbestosis is found in people who have worked with it day in day out.  People who have had prolonged exposure to it, I wouldn't be worried.

    The white asbestos, although isn't great is the weakest of them all.

  • Hello and thanks for your post

    Many people worry about similar situations when they think they may have been exposed to asbestos.

    Asbestos is still a very common substance and most people are exposed to a very small amount of asbestos fibres in their lives and yet asbestos related diseases are rare. So if you can, try not to be overly worried. It is regular occupational exposure to asbestos over many years that is known to increase the risk of lung disease and cancer, often two or three decades later.

    It's worth bearing in mind that practically everyone is exposed to asbestos and that low levels are present in our environment as it can be found in air and soil and yet very few people become ill. 

    According to the Health and Safety Executive (which is really about health and safety at work), short term exposures with asbestos will most likely have led to minimal exposure to fibres and is very unlikely to have any long-term ill health effects.

    You can also read more about this on the British Lung Cancer Foundation website.

    I hope this helps and remember you can always ring the GP if you are still concerned.

    Best wishes,

    Celene

  • Offline in reply to CRUK Nurse Celene

    Thank you so much for both of your help on this. It does make us feel better. It's just so scary as we did the work, hoovered up (with a normal hoover which I found out was wrong) and then slept in there later (after leaving the windows open). We're so worried that these extra factors will lead into it being a much larger risk. There's so little info online that doesn't just say 'Yes it's bad, and get a professional in'. It's too late for that now so we're just worried about the risk to ourselves and our children.

  • Offline in reply to AHarr

    as a nurse of 30 years I've seen only one case of asbestos and this was a very old man who had worked over 40 years with asbestos x 

    please don't be worried xx 

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