Guide 5 of 6 · the rest of the house
What happens in the rest of the house while the floor is ground?
A floor is ground in a house, not in a workshop. The dust duty turns on one word that carries it into the next room, and the surfaces the machine never touches have rules of their own.
Ground dry: dust
The word the duty turns on
WorkSafe WA describes what an uncontrolled grinding pass does: processing a crystalline silica substance can send respirable crystalline silica into the air, where it reaches the workers on the job and others at the workplace, and the page names construction among the industries where this happens.
The national duty is written the same way. Safe Work Australia’s silica pages say that people conducting a business must make sure workers and other people at the workplace are not exposed to airborne RCS above the workplace exposure standard of 0.05 mg/m³ over an eight-hour day.
The sign a control is failing
Dust that has stopped moving is not dust that is gone, and one page says so directly. WorkSafe WA advises a business to routinely check the workplace for visible dust on work surfaces and on clothing, because settled dust like that may be a sign that some of the controls are not working effectively.
What the business does with a failing control is set out in the same pages. NT WorkSafe says a single control will seldom be enough to protect workers properly. Its page states how the choice is made, and the order inside the sentence is the point: risks and worker exposures to silica are managed by picking measures from the hierarchy of controls, and where a risk remains after that comes personal protective equipment, generally a respirator of at least P2 efficiency in a half face design, and work clothing that does not collect dust.
What the business has to decide before the machine starts
Under the model Code of Practice, processing a crystalline silica substance must be controlled, and no business may carry out, direct or allow it otherwise. Where it cannot decide whether the processing is high risk, the same code is blunt: it has to be treated as high risk until an assessment can show it is not. SafeWork NSW puts the same rule in its own words, and adds its own assumption: where it is not clear whether processing a crystalline silica substance is reasonably likely to risk the health of a person at the workplace, assume that it is high risk until everything is clear. It then draws the line the floor work has to meet: all processing must be controlled, and the high risk kind carries extra duties on top.
None of that is a procedure. The sentence that matters for the rest of the house is smaller than a control measure: a job that has been thought about in those terms is a job whose dust has been planned for, and the settled-dust check above is how the plan is tested.
Cleaning, as the rules write it
Queensland’s asbestos rules are specific about cleaning a site; the silica cleaning rules WorkSafe Victoria and SafeWork NSW set for the work are in the grinding guide. Asbestos Queensland requires a work site to be cleaned of all its dust in a way that does not spread the fibres further, with access restricted to the people doing the work, and Queensland’s removal code rules out one household appliance outright: no household vacuum cleaner is to be used where asbestos is present, or where it may be, whatever filter it carries.
The silica rules do not carry an equivalent sentence for cleaning a home, and none is invented here. What they do carry is the duty that applies to the business on site, the settled-dust check, and the records that follow the job.
Where a household stands
Queensland’s code for managing asbestos in the workplace contains a sentence that outranks most assumptions about renovating: no duties under the work health and safety regulation fall on the homeowner. The national model code says the same thing and adds the practical consequence for anyone planning work on an older house: because homes are not required to hold an asbestos register, a competent person should survey the place before demolition or refurbishment work begins.
Victoria’s regulator supplies the boundary line: the state’s occupational health and safety laws do not reach a home that is not also a workplace, although homeowners may have duties under other legislation once fibres are generated. In Victoria, then, the workplace laws stop at the door of a home that is not also a workplace, and a homeowner’s own duties, if fibres are generated, come from other legislation.
NSW’s asbestos site gives the household a line to act on if the work turns up something nobody expected: treat anything that might be asbestos as though it is, stop work, clear the area and get help. On a floor job, one such moment is the covering coming away from the slab, and what might be under it, and who may take it up, is all in the old floor guide.
The whole floor
The floor, stage by stage, on the home page
This guide is general information from the agencies named with each rule.
The rules that hold under any floor covering
“It is not recommended that you handle or remove asbestos yourself.” That is the Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency, on its page for householders and home renovators, and it adds that getting a professional to do the job is easier, safer and often cheaper.
In some places the law goes further than that advice. In the Australian Capital Territory any removal needs a licensed removalist, unless it is part of minor routine maintenance or other minor work. In Queensland a home owner must be trained before taking out more than 10 square metres of non-friable material, and only a removalist holding a Class A licence may remove friable material.
Where the material goes is a rule of its own. The same agency says all asbestos waste has to be taken to a landfill licensed for it, and that waste left in a domestic rubbish bin can bring a fine. The NSW Environment Protection Authority states the same rule for New South Wales: asbestos waste may go only to a landfill that is licensed to accept it. It also strongly recommends that a licensed asbestos removalist take it away.
Why the rules are written the way they are is one thing the state pages agree on. Asbestos Queensland puts it plainly: “Breathing in asbestos fibres has been linked to asbestos-related diseases, all of which can be fatal.” WorkSafe WA says no level of exposure to asbestos is safe.
What is never done to it
- Queensland’s asbestos site says not to saw, sand, scrape or drill holes in asbestos materials.
- Asbestos Queensland: “Never use power tools (such as power saws, drills, sanders and angle grinders) or high pressure water blasters on asbestos materials.”
- The Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency says never to use high-pressure water, or any abrasive process such as scrubbing, on asbestos material.