In the U.K there is a pressure to preserve our green landscapes whilst supporting an on-going need for re-development and modern housing.

This desire, coupled with current planning legislation has led redevelopment projects to focus their attentions to brownfield sites. Unfortunately, due to a history of widespread use of asbestos containing building materials throughout the 20^th century, the soil on brownfield sites (previously developed land) is often still contaminated and hazardous. Asbestos is able to contaminate soil as a result of old building rubble and debris of asbestos containing materials being mixed with the soil on the site.

At present there are over 66,000 hectares of brownfield sites in England[1], but building work cannot be carried out until the land has been surveyed by professional asbestos surveyors. It is important that contaminated soil is remediated prior to reuse. Asbestos contaminated soil must be treated extremely seriously as exposure to asbestos fibres can lead to fatal diseases such as lung cancer and mesothelioma.

Since the 1990’s quantitative methods have been developed to measure the asbestos fibre content within a soil sample. Currently, this process is undertaken to determine the land’s classification as hazardous or non-hazardous. This may be changed by the possible introduction of a Soil Guideline Value which is being considered by the Environment Agency and should make the details of contamination more specific. This would help to improve risk assessments and will increase the need for quantitative methods of analysis.

Lucion Environmental is a well established, national asbestos surveying company. Our experience in the field, coupled with our own in-house laboratories that are UKAS accredited for testing asbestos in soils means our clients can rest assured that soil contamination is treated as seriously and professionally as it needs to be.

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[1] http://www.sustainablebuild.co.uk/BrownfieldSites.html