Clear and simple detection of asbestos stained with two dyes for building materials collected from disaster and demolition sites using a stereomicroscope

Masaaki Tabata; Ryota Haraguchi; Mitsunori Yada; Tomoya Umehara; Mizuha Furukawa

doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2023.09.020

Clear and simple detection of asbestos stained with two dyes for building materials collected from disaster and demolition sites using a stereomicroscope

Waste Manag. 2023 Oct 19:171:653-661. doi: 10.1016/j.wasman.2023.09.020. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Masaaki Tabata¹, Ryota Haraguchi², Mitsunori Yada³, Tomoya Umehara³, Mizuha Furukawa²

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry and Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Saga University, 1 Honjo-machi, Saga 840-8501, Japan. Electronic address: tabatam@cc.saga-u.ac.jp.
² Department of Chemistry and Applied Chemistry, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saga University, 1 Honjo-machi, Saga 840-8501, Japan.
³ Department of Chemistry and Applied Chemistry, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Saga University, 1 Honjo-machi, Saga 840-8501, Japan.

PMID: 37865063
DOI: 10.1016/j.wasman.2023.09.020

Abstract

Whenever houses are demolished or disasters occur, large quantities of building materials are discharged, which may contain asbestos. To prevent the damage caused by asbestos exposure, a rapid asbestos presence confirmation method is required at demolition sites or temporary disaster storage sites. It is difficult to confirm the presence of asbestos in waste building materials by simple observation. However, it can be confirmed by staining the materials with two dyes: methylene blue (MB) with positive charge, and erythrosine (RED-3) with negative charge, and using a stereomicroscope. The method was applied to samples collected from disaster and demolition sites. Asbestos was stained violet or reddish-purple, and the base material of the building materials remained blue. Using this method, even amateur workers can detect asbestos by means of an image in a different color than the building substrate. Furthermore, the present method detected asbestos more explicitly than the official method (JIS A 1482, 1483; detection limit is < 0.1%) recommended by the Japanese government. This cost-effective method is suitable for detecting asbestos at disaster and demolition sites. The mixture of MB and RED-3 formed nanoparticles of size 151 nm and surface charge of -34 mV that selectively stained asbestos. The staining mechanism was discussed.

Keywords: Asbestos; Detection; Dyes; Nanoparticles; Staining; Waste building materials.