Asbestos removal in Australia is one of the most heavily prescribed activities in workplace law. Most of what is written about it publicly is written by people who want to sell you the removal. This site is written by people who are legally prohibited from doing it.
Environics (QLD) Pty Ltd publishes this site. We hold licensed asbestos assessor credentials. Under the Work Health and Safety Regulations, a licensed asbestos assessor who takes part in a removal job cannot then monitor or clear that same job. That restriction is the reason this site exists in the form it does: we have no commercial interest in how long a removal takes, what method is chosen, or which contractor gets the work. We are paid to measure what happened.
Start here
Nine pages, each answering one question properly.
What is an asbestos-containing material?
Friable and non-friable, asbestos-contaminated dust and debris, and where each is actually found — in buildings and in plant.
Read →Who can remove asbestos?
Class A, Class B and unlicensed work, the ten square metre threshold, and the rules that still apply when no licence is needed.
Read →The asbestos removal control plan
Two mandatory elements in the regulation, and the full contents matrix the Code of Practice sets out at Appendix B.
Read →Air monitoring and clearance
Three fibre concentrations doing three different jobs, the action table, and what a clearance certificate actually certifies.
Read →Why independence matters
What the independence test says, why it is job-specific rather than relationship-specific, and why Class A is stricter than Class B.
Read →Case study — refinery tanks
Class A friable removal from the exterior of vertical process tanks, inside engineered negative-pressure enclosures.
Read →Three numbers people constantly confuse
Almost every misunderstanding we encounter on site comes back to these three fibre concentrations being treated as one number. They are not. They do three different jobs.
The workplace exposure standard — a time-weighted average over an eight-hour day, measured in a person’s breathing zone over at least four hours. It is an exposure limit, not a site cleanliness measure.
The stop-work trigger during Class A removal. Above this, work ceases and the regulator is notified. In Queensland that notification is immediate, by phone.
The clearance criterion — and the level work must return to before it can restart after a stoppage. This is the number that decides whether an area can be handed back.
How the three interact, and the full action table →
What this site is not
It is not a directory of removalists, and it does not refer work. It is not legal advice. It does not publish penalty figures we could not verify against the statute, and it says so on the page where each gap sits — the contact and sources page lists every one of them.
Where a regulator’s own guidance conflicts with the model Code of Practice, we say which we are following and why. There are several such places, and pretending otherwise would make this site less useful, not more.