Asbestos Map: Continued Mobilization to Secure Operations in the Presence of Asbestos

Responsible for 2 to 3.000 occupational illnesses each year[1], asbestos remains a priority health issue, particularly in construction.

Aware of this major challenge, the DGT, the OPPBTP and the INRS are pooling their resources through a partnership agreement since 2014, in order to establish a map of asbestos dust for the work processes most frequently encountered on construction sites.

Building on the results obtained through the measurements, efforts to secure operations involving asbestos continue. The DGT, the OPPBTP, and the Health Insurance - Occupational Risks signed a new 2024-year partnership agreement in 3 to expand the CARTO Asbestos scope to include new common work situations and to complete or even expand the scope of the mapping of observed dust levels.

In addition, a fourth version of the CARTO Asbestos report will be published soon with 7 new reference values for work situations in construction and public works.

10 years of mobilization around CARTO Asbestos

Since 2014, CARTO Amiante has aimed to provide clients, companies and prevention specialists with a reference database enabling them to select intervention processes and, for each of them, the prevention methods adapted to construction work involving asbestos-containing materials or products.

As part of the first partnership agreement, a first series of results and recommendations from this dust measurement campaign was published in 2017. Thanks to the mobilization of craftsmen and construction companies accompanied by major clients, this campaign continued to reach an unprecedented scale. Two additional reports were thus published, in 2019 and then in 2021. This latest version presented a total of 15 processes with reference values in the form of simple and clear user sheets, detailing for each process the description of the work, the working environment, the condition of the material, the nature of the asbestos fibers observed, the mapping of the results and the intervention recommendations associated with each process implemented. 16 additional processes requiring additional measurements are also described, without reference values.

Mobilization continues with CARTO Amiante 2

The momentum that has been generated has led the DGT, the OPPBTP and the Health Insurance – Professional Risks to continue the project, with the signing of a new agreement on January 5, 2024. The CARTO Amiante 2 project provides for the implementation of the following actions:

Expand the scope to take into account new current situations in the construction industry and innovations in the field, as well as to open the scope of the project to processes implemented in other areas of activity (industry, maritime) while remaining transposable to the construction sector;
Update the measurement and supervision protocol adapted to short-term interventions, with low or high dust levels, taking into account changes in current standards and experience from the previous campaign;
Complete the mapping of the dust observed, prioritizing work processes that do not have sufficient results to establish the reference values;
Support businesses, particularly SMEs/VSEs, and their employees, as well as clients, with appropriate advice on collective and individual protection established on the basis of reference results;
Ensure the transferability of the CARTO Asbestos method to other substances, such as silica.

A new version of the CARTO Asbestos report is coming with 7 additional reference values

Furthermore, over the last two years, 9 new processes have been finalized, resulting in the establishment of new reference values for the following work situations:

Dismantling an opening in the presence of asbestos-containing sealant;
Detachment by scraping of some earthenware tiles with asbestos glue;
Cutting and dismantling a section of exterior asbestos cement pipe using a pipe cutter;
Cutting and dismantling a section of exterior asbestos cement pipe using a hammer and chisel;
Cutting and dismantling a section of exterior asbestos cement pipe using a sabre saw;
Drilling of slabs and floor coverings;
Chemical stripping of paint and/or thick plastic coatings from part of an exterior facade;
Drilling of exterior facade plaster;
Dismantling of sinks and/or bathtubs with asbestos bituminous pads.

They will be included in a fourth version of the CARTO Asbestos report, which will be published soon. The report will present all the results obtained since the start of the project, namely the analysis of 22 work situations resulting from dust measurements carried out on 760 construction sites by more than 300 companies.

Twenty-four additional processes remain to be completed to reach the ten measures needed to validate the results and define a reference value. By 2025, 25 projects are targeted to finalize six "Building" processes and four "Civil Engineering" processes. Companies can apply at carto-amiante.fr.