# Forum Home Renovation Asbestos  Can anyone tell me if this is asbestos?

## gilera

I am referring to the yellowish coloured board in the middle of the photo. It is top of the wall sheet in my wet areas viewed from inside the roof of my 1973 brick veneer house. It appear to be paper coated and where the paper is damaged, the middle is white and kinda looks like plasterboard. I'm about to reno the toilet and bathroom and would like to know if it is liekly to be asbestos.  
The ceiling sheet is regular Gyprock. The floor sheet is 3/4inch James Hardy Compressed sheet (asbestos).  
Thanks!

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## mangrovejack

It looks similar to what I had in one of my walls - used for sound and/or heat/cold insulation.  It was the same stuff that older false ceiling panels were made of.  In our case it didn't contain Asbestos, but I'm not sure you'll get anyone definitively stating in your case in public that its not asbestos.

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## gilera

Thanks. Yes I can appreciate no one wanting to committ. Any ideas of what the product was called or who made it? I'm guessing probably not as you would have mentioned. If I can get an idea of possible product, I can look into it to compare. Cheers.

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## mangrovejack

My father in law said mine was called kapok, made of some natural fibre.

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## gilera

Thanks. The outside coating is very thin kind of like coarse paper with white sandwiched between just like plasterboard. I know that plasterboard in Australia has never had asbestos as far as we know, but wondering if there were other products that looked similar that may have. It might just be some wet area version of plasterboard from the era.

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## Consultant

Visually it has the appearance of some sort of fiber board, at least to me. Maybe MDF? not sure if that was used in the era of construction of your house. The focus of the pic is also on the wrong spot so it makes it harder to tell if it's fraying or if it's just dirty...
However you should really just consider testing it to be safe, it would cost you what, 40 bucks at most?  
We test acoustic ceiling tile for asbestos which internally has the appearance of coarse fiber. Lab results typically tell us it's mostly cellulose, not sure if we've ever actually found asbestos in it.

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