Asbestos in Vermiculite

Vermiculite insulation was installed as ceiling and wall insulation in hundreds of thousands of Canadian homes, offices, banks and other buildings. Much of this material is contaminated with potentially dangerous asbestos fibres.

If you wish to learn more about the hazards of asbestos in vermiculite, please read our detailed Newsletter PEN 16, "Controlling the Hazard and Liability of Asbestos in Vermiculite Insulation".

CBC TV produced a W-Five program, aired on Saturday April 16, 2005, "W-Five Investigates a Deadly Insulation that is in Hundreds of Thousands of Canadian Homes". For a summary of this program and related links, please click here.

A Question and Answer sheet is also available from the CBC News The National episode "Deadly Dust" which aired Feb 7, 2003 by Reporter Frédéric Zalac. It is available here in PDF format.

If you decide to have the suspect material analysed (since not all vermiculite contains asbestos) please follow the recommended procedure that we have provided on this web site and on our automated phone message.

Note that we are a business-to-business company which means that other than laboratory analysis of samples, we do not provide services to home-owners. Nevertheless, we would like to help you with your questions and have therefore created an archive of home-owner questions concerning Mould, Asbestos and Vermiculite. Please click the Home Owners button to review this archive for further information.