Asbestos and Second-Hand Building Materials: What Buyers Need to Know

5 min read

Renovators, DIYers and bargain hunters love a good salvage find, old bricks, timber, fixtures and fittings pulled from a house being renovated or demolished. Most of that material is perfectly safe. But building materials from older Australian homes carry a real risk that isn't visible in a photo or even up close: asbestos. Here's what to know before you buy, sell or salvage anything from a pre-1990s property.

Australia's asbestos ban

Australia banned the mining, manufacture, use, reuse, import and export of all forms of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials nationally from 31 December 2003. That means any building material genuinely manufactured after that date should be asbestos-free. The risk sits with everything built or fitted out before that ban, and asbestos-containing products were in widespread use in Australian construction for decades before it, right through into the early 1990s in many product lines.

The practical takeaway: if a home, shed, garage or outbuilding was built before roughly 1990, or you don't know its build date, treat any of its original building materials as a possible asbestos risk until proven otherwise.

Where it turns up in older homes and salvage

Asbestos-containing materials were used widely because they were cheap, durable and fire resistant. In homes and salvage from the relevant era, they commonly show up in:

Fibro (fibre cement) sheeting, used for internal walls, external cladding, and in bathrooms and laundries
Eaves and soffit linings
Roofing sheets, particularly corrugated-style fibre cement roofing
Vinyl floor tiles and their backing or the adhesive underneath
Fencing sheets, especially the flat or corrugated fibre cement style seen in older suburban fence lines
Textured ceiling finishes and some old ceiling tiles
Old water and drainage pipes in some installations
Backing material behind old switchboards and heaters in some cases

If you're looking at salvage from a demolition, or buying materials pulled out of an older renovation, any of the above categories should raise a flag, not because they're definitely asbestos, but because they're exactly where it's most likely to be.

You cannot identify it by eye

This is the single most important thing to understand: there is no reliable way to visually tell whether a sheet of fibro, a tile, or an old pipe contains asbestos just by looking at it, even for people with plenty of building experience. Asbestos-containing and non-asbestos versions of the same product often look identical. The only reliable way to know is testing by a qualified person, generally through a NATA-accredited laboratory, or by treating the material as asbestos-containing by default given its age and type and handling it accordingly.

Don't rely on a seller's assurance that "it's not asbestos" unless they can show you an actual test result. Most private sellers genuinely don't know either, and are simply repeating what someone once told them, or guessing.

It is illegal to sell or reuse asbestos-containing material

This is worth being direct about: selling, supplying, or reusing asbestos-containing material is illegal in Australia. This applies whether it's a full sheet of old fibro cladding, a stack of vinyl floor tiles, or fencing panels pulled out during a renovation. It doesn't matter whether the seller thinks it's a harmless bit of scrap, or genuinely doesn't know what it is; if it turns out to be asbestos-containing material, listing or selling it is not something anyone should be doing, and buying it puts you in possession of a banned and hazardous material.

If you come across a listing offering old fibro sheeting, vintage roofing sheets, old fencing panels, or similar materials from an older property, and there's no clear evidence they've been tested and confirmed asbestos-free, the safest response is simply not to buy them, and to consider reporting the listing.

What's safe to salvage instead

None of this means salvage is off the table, plenty of material from older homes is entirely safe to reuse. Generally lower risk:

Solid timber, including structural timber, floorboards and doors (timber itself doesn't contain asbestos, though check for old paint if sanding, due to lead paint risk on pre-1970s timber)
Bricks and stone
Metal fixtures and fittings, hardware, hinges, taps and similar
Glass in windows and doors
Ceramic tiles (as opposed to vinyl floor tiles, which are the higher risk category)

When in doubt about any specific material, especially sheeting, flat panels, old flooring or anything from a bathroom, laundry or roof of an older home, the safer assumption is caution rather than confidence.

When removal work is needed, it needs to be licensed

If you're renovating or demolishing an older property and suspect asbestos-containing material is present, don't attempt to remove, cut, drill, sand or disturb it yourself. Disturbing asbestos-containing material is what creates the airborne fibre risk; material left undisturbed and in good condition is generally lower risk than material that's been cut up, broken, or sanded.

Asbestos removal above a minor scope must be carried out by a licensed asbestos removalist, and requirements vary by state and territory regarding what can be removed without a licence versus what requires a licensed contractor. If you're planning any renovation work on a pre-1990s property, it's worth getting the property assessed for asbestos before work starts, and using a licensed removalist for anything beyond very minor, low-risk material as defined by your state's work health and safety regulator.

Buying and selling responsibly

If you're listing building materials from an older property for sale, and you're not certain of their age or composition, get them properly assessed before listing them, not after a buyer raises a concern. If you're buying salvage or second-hand building materials, ask directly about the age of the property they came from, and treat any pre-1990s sheeting, flooring, roofing or fencing with real caution unless there's clear evidence it's been tested. Browse building materials and salvage on /listings, and see /rules for what isn't permitted to be listed on the site.