Dutch Company Claims Asbestos Removal from Building Materials

Asbester, a company in the Netherlands, claims it can convert asbestos-containing products into non-hazardous construction materials. Located in Rotterdam, Asbester aims to permanently eliminate the harmful global waste problem of asbestos from ending up in landfills. Using a unique denaturing process, large sheets of asbestos cement are drenched in water, heated, shredded and then turned into a slurry. Asbester says these steps dissolve dangerous asbestos fibers, removing the toxic mineral and allowing the material to be repurposed as calcium silicate hydrate for use in concrete mixtures for construction projects or in the paint industry.  “All asbestos just goes to landfill,” Graham Gould with Thermal Recycling told the BBC. “Once it’s in a landfill, it just stays there forever. People talk about removing asbestos but no asbestos has ever been removed, it has just been shifted from one place to another.” The company is currently utilizing this process for asbestos cement roofing sheets. The same process will soon be used to denature water pipes. For now the company is working out of a small industrial unit but plans to have a full-scale plant up and running by 2026. Experts believe a processing plant could denature up to 33,000 tons of asbestos a year. The European Asbestos Forum reported in 2019 that an estimated 220 million tons of asbestos was produced around the world. While asbestos use in the U.S. has declined, raw asbestos impor...
Source: Asbestos and Mesothelioma News - Category: Environmental Health Authors: Tags: Asbestos (general) Asbestos Exposure Clinical Trials/Research/Emerging Treatments Mesothelioma Source Type: news