Artex or Asbestos?

Asbestos was marketed under a number of brands, but the brand by which it became known generically was Artex. Artex: that finish that was so often used to hide cracks in walls and in plaster behind a thick decorative layer of swirling patterns and stipple finishes.

The problem is that, until the mid 1980s, Artex was manufactured using asbestos. The material originated back in the 1930s and the name was supposed to mean artistic texture. If there is an Artex coating in a house or other building that is older than around twenty years, extreme caution should be taken in dealing with it. Removing Artex can be a difficult task at it adheres very strongly to underlying materials. In the past people, including builders and professional decorators have sanded it down in order to remove the stipple and achieve a flat surface that can be over-painted. This is a potentially lethal activity. The dust that is produced will contain carcinogenic asbestos fibres that will lodge in the lung and are likely to cause one or mare of a range of dreadful respiratory diseases, some of which are always fatal.

Before treating an Artex decorated room it is essential that if the building is over twenty years old then the coating should be tested to see if it contains asbestos. There are a number of organisations that will do this for a fee. If it does contain asbestos, then special precautions must be taken during removal.

Just to remove one square meter of the material, the following procedures are necessary. All unnecessary people should be evacuated from the area and furnishings should be removed. All other surfaces should be covered with thick gauge polythene. The coating should be wetted and only loose pieces removed and placed in a container. Steam or penetrating solvent should be used to loosen the material which should be scraped away and placed in the container. The revealed surface should be sealed. The whole area should be vacuumed with a HEPA filtered vacuum cleaner, all debris placed in the container and the container disposed of at an official asbestos receiving site.

At one time it was once considered to be the height of contemporary fashion in home decoration, but now it can be one of the underlying factors in the escalating numbers of asbestos compensation claims.