How do you determine if your sheet flooring has asbestos?

As with other building materials, knowledge of the history of the construction can help you eliminate some materials that are too new to contain asbestos. For the rest, the only way to determine with certainty if asbestos is present is to have a sample sent to a lab and examined microscopically.

Many materials can be examined in a polarized light microscope to determine whether and how much asbestos is present.

However, because of the way flooring materials are made, it is usually necessary to examine the same with an electron microscopy to be certain that asbestos is not present.