Episode 1379
We talk Asbestos with Handyman Bob, The OG of Around the House
We dive into the real facts about Asbestos as there is so much incorrect information out there. We brought back in Handyman Bob Strong, one of the Original hosts of Around the House Show and Eric G's former Co-host. We dive deep into what products can have Asbestos in it and how you should deal with it in your home. Some of it is much safer to work with than others.
There is a lot to unpack here so lets dive in and find out. For more information about Envirotest head to: https://envirotest.biz/
Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen
We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/
We have moved the Pro Insider Special on Thursday to its new feed. It will no longer be on this page. You can find it and subscribe right here: https://around-the-house-pro-insider.captivate.fm/
Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.
Mentioned in this episode:
Baldwin Hardware
A new kind of decking and siding from Millboard
For more information about the latest in decking and cladding head to https://www.millboard.com/
Transcript
[00:00:32] Handyman Bob Strong: Traveled on textures. Uh, you talked about nine by nine tiles. I'm gonna say 80 to 90% of the ones that we test in the nine by nine inch range. Uh, test positive for asbestos, uh, as does the Masick usually that's holding those down. We have, um, maybe 40. Of the 12 by 12 tiles when it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot [00:01:00] to know, but we've got you covered.
[:[00:01:06] Eric Goranson: to
[:[00:01:06] Eric Goranson: house with Eric G and Caroline B, where we talk home improvement every single weekend. Thanks for joining us. Hello, Caroline, how are
[:[00:01:16] Caroline Blazovsky: Hello. I actually feel like the third wheel today. I feel like I shouldn't be here.
[:[00:01:22] Eric Goranson: should be out.
[:[00:01:38] Handyman Bob Strong: with you and Caroline. You're never a third wheel. thank
[:[00:01:51] Eric Goranson: We gotta get everybody up to speed on handyman Bob's history here with around the house. He was the host and co-host of this show [00:02:00] for nearly a decade and was my former co-host. And, uh, there was a day that he wanted his weekends back and he handed me the torch and we have run with it up to here, but we have, uh, handyman Bob and his suspenders right back on
[:[00:02:15] Handyman Bob Strong: Well, I'll tell you what, that wasn't a torch. I passed off. It was a microphone, but you've been flaming it ever since
[:[00:02:32] Eric Goranson: well, thanks for coming back on brother. This is great.
[:[00:02:38] Eric Goranson: Always welcome on here. You and I were talking about it, and this is something that you and I have talked about in the past and Caroline and I love talking about it, but you know, we still are seeing, and I'm seeing this on social media, on all the home improvement groups out there, the misunderstanding of asbestos and how to deal with it in your home.
[:[00:03:25] Eric Goranson: As far as Oregon code and Washington code that you're you're you have to be part of that process to follow the rules, correct?
[:[00:03:50] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, the inside your, uh, home. Caroline, uh, you're the queen of your castle. Mm-hmm you can do almost anything you [00:04:00] wanna do, but if you're a contractor, uh, the onus is upon you to hire somebody. Right? And it, it was in, um, January of 2016 that the state of Oregon, I say reinforced the asbestos rules. And you remember this time?
[:[00:04:47] Handyman Bob Strong: I was prepared the opportunity presented itself. January 1st, 2016 is when the rules were reinforced by the, um, 13th day of [00:05:00] January, I had my federal inspector's license and by the first day of February, I was taking my first samples. There you
[:[00:05:20] Eric Goranson: Misconceptions about asbestos. You know, I see so many people go oh, before 1980 is what that rule is on asbestos. And there's just this common thing where people almost confuse lead and asbestos together on when those materials were used in building materials.
[:[00:05:48] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, it was made illegal to use in residential structures, uh, and people do conflate asbestos and lead based paint at that point. So you're right. Another [00:06:00] thing that happened was that, uh, was 1986. The EPA, uh, was granted full authority to regulate asbestos. So people here at 86 and they say, oh, well, asbestos was made illegal and, and so on.
[:[00:06:53] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, they've, you know, they've, they've found workarounds. They found things that, that replaced [00:07:00] the asbestos. And we, we should talk about that at some point is do why was it used and was it really necessary? Was it any. So I've
[:[00:07:21] Caroline Blazovsky: And it wasn't a conscious thing. It was something that happened to me when I was young, I was very close with my grandfather. He was extremely prevalent in my life and, and someone that I really admired and looked up to, he worked for John's Manville for many, many years. He was brought out over, you know, he came.
[:[00:07:56] Caroline Blazovsky: Come work at our factories and we're gonna, [00:08:00] you know, provide you with homes and places for your family and money. And so he did, and he ended up working there for his entire career and of course died and, and his eighties developed Malia. And was constantly, you know, at, at some point before that being checked regularly for asbestosis, which obviously can turn into myoma.
[:[00:08:36] Caroline Blazovsky: And I guess I always wanted to help people and understand and kind of work against the man if you will, and sort of make these conditions better. But I never really understood it until many years later that this was the reason why, cuz I saw my grandfather suffer from this horrible disease. So with that being said, I think you're so right.
[:[00:09:11] Caroline Blazovsky: Um, to make it right years after. I mean, it used to look like it was snowing. My parents grew up in that area. And so you'd go out in the middle of the summer and you see this stuff that looked like snow, and it was the asbestos just falling out of the sky.
[:[00:09:41] Handyman Bob Strong: was pure raw asbestos. Mm-hmm
[:[00:10:03] Eric Goranson: And they mixed in asbestos with the clay to make 'em so they could make ashtrays and stuff that would hold up better for the heat and stuff for ashtrays, with the kids. And. Sprinkling and mixing it right in, in the middle of third
[:[00:10:22] Handyman Bob Strong: And in fact, in the sixties, uh, my mother was a cigarette smoker and at one point in time, she was smoking a cigarette called Kent. It was made by the P Laurel iron company. As I recall the filter on the Kent C. Was known as Aite filter hundred percent pure asbestos
[:[00:10:47] Eric Goranson: my beer. Let's make asbestos smoking worse,
[:[00:11:21] Handyman Bob Strong: But toward the end, her mouth would open and close and she couldn't draw. It's terrible. Yeah. She was like a fish on the dock
[:[00:11:33] Caroline Blazovsky: I think our listeners have to understand is that these things don't affect you immediately. It's not something where you're gonna see an impact and you're gonna know that you were exposed.
[:[00:11:57] Caroline Blazovsky: You know, seventies starting, usually 60 [00:12:00] seventies, you have to start to be monitored for these things and they can just have this impact that you never were expecting. So it's a long term thing. It's not something that's gonna happen
[:[00:12:18] Handyman Bob Strong: It's the one that ultimately, uh, develops into mesothelioma. Uh, the latency period, uh, is 20 to 70 years from exposure to onset of mesothelioma 20 to 70 years. So the 20 year old who's working. The home remodeling industry today by age 40 may sea signs by the same token, it may not occur until he's 90 years old.
[:[00:13:34] Handyman Bob Strong: The other group of people. Is in their forties and fifties. Well, where are they coming from? Because by the time, you know, they weren't lagging pipe, they weren't building ships for world war II. Um, they weren't working at a Johns Manville plant making roofing. They were remodeling commercial and residential structures.
[:[00:14:00] Eric Goranson: Well, Bob, you know, there's so many. Misconceptions, as well as what building materials that you're finding asbestos in. That's something that you have to deal with. And, you know, I'll jump on, uh, the social media groups, you know, the Facebook groups for home improvement and old houses and things like that.
[:[00:14:45] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, I, I'm gonna put a, a date group on this for you. Okay. From about 1940 to 1980, I will tell you that. And the word I use is ubiquitous. Asbestos was used in [00:15:00] virtually all building material. Other than wood, glass, and metal. Um, everything else, all bets are off, so, okay. We find it very com commonly in sprayed on textures on walls and ceilings traveled on textures.
[:[00:15:45] Handyman Bob Strong: Actually it was television early television commercial. Now with more asbestos for longer where, oh, no Armstrong
[:[00:16:08] Handyman Bob Strong: Absolutely. So those are areas where you find it and you find it in, um, in things you wouldn't even expect. Uh, window glazing that, uh, sealant putty that holds the, the, the glass into the window sash itself, um, uh, has a small amount of, uh, sometimes we don't find. In roofing anymore, other than potentially, and once in a great, great while the felt paper or, uh, tar paper underneath the roofing.
[:[00:17:04] Eric Goranson: always that risk of those people that went and put three roofs on the building.
[:[00:17:24] Handyman Bob Strong: is a distinct possibility. You're absolutely right. And so when it comes time to, uh, to test, even though in the state of Oregon, there is a, uh, an exemption for three tab, shingle roofing.
[:[00:17:50] Eric Goranson: Gotcha. And of course, one of my favorite sighting materials is the asbestos sighting out there.
[:[00:18:03] Handyman Bob Strong: Yeah. And you just said the, the operative word incorrectly, and it brings us to a couple of terms that, uh, are important in the world of asbestos fryable and non fryable. Now those nine by nine tiles, we were talking about the 12 by 12 vinyl tiles.
[:[00:18:43] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, so, you know, done over the country.
[:[00:18:54] Handyman Bob Strong: let's talk a little bit about fryable and non fryable. Yeah. Uh, because that citing [00:19:00] really is not dangerous. Unless you belt sand it, or, um, get real aggressive with hand tools and smash it up and break it up. And it, it can be taken off, uh, one piece at a time, as long as it's not thrown into the dumpster and, and forming, uh, lots of little tiny pieces, the same way with the floor tiles.
[:[00:19:54] Handyman Bob Strong: Those are very fryable means fryable. If you look up the definition of it means you can [00:20:00] powder it by hand, you can make non fryable materials. Fryable. Um, through more aggressive action, but at least that's the way the state interprets it. However, uh, fryable is, is a common term and it's easy to spot something that's fryable because it means it's soft and pliable or not pliable soft.
[:[00:20:49] Handyman Bob Strong: Through the dust cloud and it's raw asbestos. There's a
[:[00:21:06] Caroline Blazovsky: Right? Like you said with your mom, it just wasn't an option at that point, he got cancer much later. So, and he was part of the lawsuit and all of that. So it was, he had worked there, but my grandmother. Was breathing in all that dust off of his clothes. And I think this is true for anyone in the contracting industry.
[:[00:21:39] Caroline Blazovsky: And then the other thing we're talking about as I see here, a lot of, you know, we have a lot. Illegal immigrants. We have people that are working that maybe they're not illegal to the country, but they're working, you know, without having insurance and, and licensing and contracting, um, the contractors or the general contractors are paying them under the table.
[:[00:22:18] Caroline Blazovsky: Like they're just throwing them into the field and having them rip down construction. And they're they're in there without any PPE. It's it's um, it's kind
[:[00:22:32] Caroline Blazovsky: And I can say in New Jersey, I mean, you can go to your local. We have Wawa here.
[:[00:22:53] Caroline Blazovsky: Or they go with a different contractor the next day. So. No protection for them whatsoever and sad. It's very sad. Yeah. [00:23:00]
[:[00:23:18] Eric Goranson: They did some asbestos tests. And hired a company like that to come in and do the abatement. That was not a certified abatement company. And they got hit with a hundred thousand dollars. Fine. Now I think they negotiated that back down later on through the through court appeals, but it was, it was a hefty fine that they wanted to make an
[:[00:23:41] Handyman Bob Strong: And that's as it should be. Um, it's unfortunate that, uh, that same company changed its name started up is probably doing the same thing. Yep. Because the, the money is there to cover the fines. Uh, it, it really, it [00:24:00] is a sad situation. And Caroline, you mentioned, uh, the clothes, uh, and Eric, you were asking about where do we find ABES?
[:[00:24:43] Handyman Bob Strong: But Ray Bestos. Well, where does the Bestos come in? In the Rayos
[:[00:24:56] Handyman Bob Strong: Yes. If you want asbestos breaks, I'm here to tell you, you can find them. [00:25:00] They are just simply you go into the, uh, uh, AutoZone or. Uh, O'Reilly or any of the others. And you asked for organic breaks and you're gonna get asbestos breaks.
[:[00:25:33] Handyman Bob Strong: Nah. Did he have protective, uh, covering over his clothes? Nah, he took those same clothes home and you're right. His wife washed his clothes. Actually. The first thing he did cuz the little kid he's, uh, ran up and hugged daddy, daddy, daddy, and he hugged them and he held them and he walked into the house, holding them.
[:[00:25:58] Eric Goranson: and just as the, just [00:26:00] as the, the business next door that had the kid that was sweeping the break dust out the out the garage door at the end of the day, that was the shop hand. And it was out in the parking lot. And the people that were walking into the business next door, that was the real estate office or the, or whatever, or the gas station that this happened at, you know?
[:[00:26:27] Handyman Bob Strong: homes. Yeah. And vermiculite is an interesting product because it's not just used as insulation in, uh, addicts and walls of older homes.
[:[00:27:02] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, matter of fact, that's something let's, uh, um, go back and talk a little bit about. What is the origin of asbestos in a few minutes? Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. Cuz it's, you know, probably whoever's listening may not know the origin of it, but, uh, vermiculite is, uh, a mineral it's mine and, uh, in limy Montana, the mind that they were getting it from, uh, had contaminants of, uh, or contaminated, uh, uh, veins, uh, uh, of, uh, asbestos.
[:[00:28:00] Handyman Bob Strong: I wouldn't wanna be breathing the dust coming off of it. Uh, but, um, we do test it for asbestos. It's one of the most difficult products to test for asbestos. The vermiculite mineral is popped like popcorn to give it its light airy. Uh, attributes mm-hmm um, it also, uh, kinda looks like Micah that, uh, shiny surface to it.
[:[00:28:55] Handyman Bob Strong: Uh, it, it can be potentially very harmful and it's [00:29:00] very, very difficult to test for. It can be, it can be tested with some reliability, um, but there is a special. Testing methodology that has been developed by the EPA. For it. So if anybody's, uh, running, if anybody runs across something that looks like captain crunch, breakfast cereal in their attic, gross, that's be delight
[:[00:29:27] Caroline Blazovsky: good one talk about asbestos, like where it comes from and, and what makes it so dangerous. And I think from my understanding of it, it, it lodges into your lung and sort of creates like these little shards of glass that don't ever go away. And that's what creates that asbestosis and it sort of sits there and then.
[:[00:29:49] Handyman Bob Strong: Absolutely. Um, let's back up to what is asbestos? Well, asbestos is not a thing. Asbestos is a form of a [00:30:00] mineral and it's, uh, uh, the name asbestos is given. Six minerals, uh, in particular, the most common of which is, uh, commonly. We refer to as, uh, Cile asbestos.
[:[00:30:50] Handyman Bob Strong: Industrial use commercial use of asbestos was Chris asbestos. Um, there are others, no point in [00:31:00] naming them because you know, that makes great radio before we're off the show, but. They're broken into two part two, uh, descriptions.
[:[00:31:50] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, but you're right, Caroline, what happens is that you inhale. It gets into the lung. It can, [00:32:00] you cannot expectorate. You can't expel it. It gets stuck down in there. That's what makes it so dangerous because your lung has protective abilities. It begins building a massive tissue around it. Ultimately that can become a, um, a, a cancerous tumor.
[:[00:32:46] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, that's, it's the minor stage, so it's kind of the first stage. And then you, and I don't mean stage and sense of cancer, but you've got the asbestosis then [00:33:00] perhaps you end up with, um, the, these little. Uh, pockets in your lungs and then potentially mesothelioma. However, inhalation is not the only method of entry into the body.
[:[00:33:30] Eric Goranson: Eric, Don eating that. Exactly.
[:[00:33:38] Handyman Bob Strong: My friend you've been eating from the asbestos white
[:[00:34:03] Eric Goranson: Who is the teacher? Uh, I'm walking down the halls of this school and it's a temporary school cuz they are remodeling the, the school that, that Benson is in. And so they're in a temporary school, but I have not seen so much nine by. Floor tile in a building, as I've seen in this, and I'm looking up and I'm seeing the steamlines for the boiler that are wrapped around the pipes in the ceiling.
[:[00:34:56] Handyman Bob Strong: Well, it's a great question. Um, and [00:35:00] it is. It is our school buildings. And in fact, that brought our attention to asbestos and started the first rules of asbestos. The regulation is referred to as a, it's an acronym that, um, a addresses it in an emergency act. Um, And it is, it is a rule that requires every school building in America.
[:[00:36:07] Handyman Bob Strong: Either presumed asbestos containing material. We refer to that as P ACM or asbestos containing material. We refer to that as ACM in every school building throughout America. Uh, the maintenance staff knows exactly where every piece of it is. And on a recurring basis, uh, an inspector such as our company, it would go through.
[:[00:37:14] Handyman Bob Strong: Well, where was that coming from? Well, it was coming from the asbestos. Ceiling tiles in the, in the classrooms mm-hmm and in the hallways. And that was, that was where we began to realize, wait a minute, takes a whole lot of this stuff in these schools. And a whole section of law was written. To protect school children and the people in the schools.
[:[00:37:45] Caroline Blazovsky: our, and our generation Bob. So, you know, I'm approaching the big five zero, which I'm scared to say out loud, but I'm saying it, but we
[:[00:37:58] Caroline Blazovsky: tell that to my [00:38:00] bones, but anyway, I, uh, I think we all went to school and were around all of this asbestos that was not cared for.
[:[00:38:25] Caroline Blazovsky: It's terrible. Yeah. And, and how that's gonna impact the good news. We don't know. I
[:[00:38:48] Eric Goranson: But, uh, the, the ceiling tiles, as Bob said, were a whole other discussion, you know, when you got. Because there was no air filtration in these schools, either because many times they were boiler systems. Mm-hmm they just had [00:39:00] boiler heat. So there air infiltrate, air, air filtration, there's no forced air. So there was nothing to take anything outta the air.
[:[00:39:10] Caroline Blazovsky: that was better for us though, because this stuff wasn't blowing around as much either because we weren't using this force to air, it was just kind of settling wherever it settled. we didn't have to deal with, uh, until
[:[00:39:20] Handyman Bob Strong: it up.
[:[00:39:44] Handyman Bob Strong: And that's probably true. It is that the matrix that vinyl matrix binds that asbestos so tight, not so much with the ceiling, those ceilings, and I've only had occasion to test one of them. It was in an old commercial building [00:40:00] here in Southeast Portland. Um, and apparently it had been, um, had been installed very similar to what was in the schools.
[:[00:40:36] Handyman Bob Strong: They used to do the guys used to do that all the
[:[00:40:42] Handyman Bob Strong: it was that soft and. That was, that was the, so when I'm talking about ceiling tiles, I'm not talking about the, the ones that drop into the metal grid. This is yep. These are the 12 inch ones. Yeah. Yeah. This was something that actually got put up there [00:41:00] in place.
[:[00:41:15] Eric Goranson: see Bob, I see those in old homes where maybe that old plaster ceiling was failing. And in the, in the fifties and sixties, they put those same 12 by 12 type tiles up in that, in that home to cover up that
[:[00:41:29] Handyman Bob Strong: Absolutely. And just as important when, when thinking about the tile itself, that fiber tile, um, usually those were stuck up with a glue dot and those glue dots. Um, may or may not have asbestos in them. So, uh, testing the tile is only a piece of it. You gotta get one of the whole ones down so that you can test the adhesive holding it there.
[:[00:42:29] Handyman Bob Strong: I have tested thousands of samples of plaster. I can count on two hands because the total is six. Um, I only have five digits on one of my hands, so, um, so I count on you'd live
[:[00:42:51] Handyman Bob Strong: have, uh, we've only found six samples that had asbestos in them. If you read the books, You find that asbestos was [00:43:00] used extensively in plaster Carolina. I think the books were written on the east coast. Mm
[:[00:43:10] Handyman Bob Strong: absolutely. That's where I'm told that you'll find asbestos in plaster out here.
[:[00:43:27] Eric Goranson: You know, something it's interesting, Bob, cuz it's you're right. And it's almost like lead paint shows up in tests.
[:[00:44:03] Eric Goranson: There's a significantly less of that because that paint store was maybe a different style of neighborhood or a different class of neighborhood. And they didn't use that higher grade of
[:[00:44:33] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, in the, um, in the Sears robot kit, home neighborhoods, I guess that's the best way to describe it? Uh, not so much, you know, so you're absolutely right, but it was, it was a high end product and people with the money paid more for. And quite frankly, it served them well because it lasted a long [00:45:00] time against the weather.
[:[00:45:14] Eric Goranson: You know, it's funny, Bob, I can drive past my parents' old house. The first one I grew up in up until I was eight that was painted in the early seventies by my.
[:[00:45:35] that
[:[00:45:48] Handyman Bob Strong: And, um, it, it gets into, uh, into the ground and it's, it's harmful to, um, us, if we eat the vegetables because [00:46:00] they uptake the lead. Uh, if children come by and, uh, stick a piece of it in their mouth and taste it, we're talking a little kiddies now. Or maybe it's just, uh, sissy is standing at the front window with her hands on the window, sill the interior ledge of the window, uh, waiting for daddy to come home.
[:[00:46:46] Handyman Bob Strong: Does it have a downside? Absolutely. Unfortunately. And Caroline, you alluded to this a little while ago. What are we doing today? That. 50 years from now, we're gonna say, how could we have been so [00:47:00] stupid or worse than that? Our kids and grandkids are gonna say, how could they have been so dumb
[:[00:47:06] Caroline Blazovsky: I mean, we know you knows dust is a big thing now that I've had to test for, and probably something you've tested for, but silica dust is becoming, you know, the next kind of asbestos it's. So homes are. Laden with it. They do construction. They don't clean it up. It sits in the duct work. It starts blowing out through the environment.
[:[00:47:39] Handyman Bob Strong: you're you're absolutely indeed deployment.
[:[00:48:00] Caroline Blazovsky: don't you? It depends. It depends what it is. You know, it all varies sometimes, you know, we do water testing.
[:[00:48:15] Handyman Bob Strong: boy, that sounded like a commercial .
[:[00:48:28] Eric Goranson: Is fiberglass insulation gonna be something down the road. And again, I have, no, I have no.
[:[00:48:49] Caroline Blazovsky: But when you, you know, when people have basements and they're unfinished and they just leave the open batting down there, it's coming up in your air sample and they go, well, where's the fiberglass. I'm like, you've got open batting and they go, oh yeah, I do. Right. [00:49:00] It's in my basement. So it just gets airborne and you're breathing it
[:[00:49:03] Handyman Bob Strong: Yeah, absolutely. It's, it's so fascinating because the, uh, the rules that we. Uh, we go by as far as the asbestos is concerned and why we're testing for it. Uh, is to keep it out of the transfer station to keep it out of the, out of the dumps out of the, the waste stream, if you will. And there is a specific exclusion for rock wall or mineral woo as they refer to it and ASBE, and, um, fiberglass insulation.
[:[00:50:16] Handyman Bob Strong: Um, it, it, it doesn't have barbs on it. Like the, uh, asbestos does. There
[:[00:50:32] Caroline Blazovsky: I'm, don't,
[:[00:50:54] Caroline Blazovsky: and there was nobody to refer them to, like, it was like they just stopped doing remediation and there's very [00:51:00] few companies doing it anymore. A lot of people have gone into mold and restoration and that kind of thing, but not asbestos. Is that a problem that we're gonna see moving forward
[:[00:51:12] Handyman Bob Strong: That's the first I've heard of it. Um, however, if I were to just speculate, I'd say, you know what? Asbestos carries with it currently much higher risk of litigation down the road than say dealing with a mold issue, which in some states is an unregulated, uh, remediation, uh, abatement of asbestos is a highly regulated.
[:[00:51:48] Eric Goranson: Yeah.
[:[00:52:01] Caroline Blazovsky: There were a couple companies that were like, you know, not the greatest, um, I would say on the shady side, but yeah, it was a problem and I'm sure it still is
[:[00:52:26] Handyman Bob Strong: Mm-hmm um, the bench of asbestos. Yeah, me too. Building inspectors is getting deeper too.
[:[00:52:43] Eric Goranson: Bob we're talking, you know, Oregon and of course, Carolina, New Jersey here, but across the country, you know, for the whole listening audience out there, it's a state by state thing. Yes.
[:[00:52:58] Handyman Bob Strong: Absolutely. And in fact, [00:53:00] we occasionally will have, uh, a call from somebody from out of state who has been hired by a, uh, a commercial real, um, Retail establishment. Yep. To do a fit up in a, in a shopping mall someplace a, a tenant improvement.
[:[00:53:44] Handyman Bob Strong: But these are folks from out of state. And I just shake my head and say, how you know, why do they not know? What is it about their state that makes them different? And I'm gonna tell you that the one that [00:54:00] really surprised me the most and we had, it's a recurring thing is the state of California. These contractors are coming up from California and they say, you know, we go into these shopping malls in our own home state.
[:[00:54:34] Handyman Bob Strong: The landfills trained. They have the, uh, transfer stations trained. They have the commercial waste haulers trained. They've got here's one for you. They've got home Depot trained to the point where, uh, the home Depot, uh, uh, carpet installer is gonna come out and he says, I can't put down carpet until you have that floor tested.
[:[00:55:17] Eric Goranson: And it's something that you
[:[00:55:24] Caroline Blazovsky: Asbestos came from New Jersey. I mean, it John's Manville was here and I definitely think we should be way, way, way more strict than we are. I mean, I. You need a license to, you know, remove it. That's obviously the state benefits from that, but I don't really see strict guidelines here
[:[00:55:51] Handyman Bob Strong: It's not, I guess, in the industrialized world. Yeah. Where it's even a legal commodity. It's it's illegal. [00:56:00] Mm-hmm Eric, you'll appreciate this. Um, matter of fact, you might have been the one who turned me onto an article about, uh, trying to, uh, import into Australia, uh, muscle cars, muscle cars had a lot of asbestos in headliners, uh, firewalls.
[:[00:56:48] Eric Goranson: and they force you to make it right. Hand drives like the rest of their cars as well. So you have to convert that dash of that, uh, 63 Corvette split window to, uh, be driving on the other [00:57:00] side. It ain't cheap.
[:[00:57:18] Eric Goranson: In my spare time, right? Bob in your spare ,
[:[00:57:29] Eric Goranson: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Bob, we are running out of time today. This is always the fastest hour of radio. As you have always said for the. 15 years or so, but, uh, how do people track down your company if they're in Oregon, Washington and want to have your team come out and, uh, check to see what's ugly on their job
[:[00:57:51] Handyman Bob Strong: Easiest way, go to our website and Viro test dot B. Iz stands for business. We, we don't spell it. [00:58:00] Right. And Viro tests, all one word dot B. I.
[:[00:58:16] Eric Goranson: What are you feeling? He is around the house. You got it.
[:[00:58:22] Eric Goranson: been
[:[00:58:31] Eric Goranson: it. Well, Bob, you know how this, you know how the rest of this goes?
[:[00:58:37] Caroline Blazovsky: Caroline B
[:[00:58:42] Eric Goranson: to around the house
