This site is published by Environics (QLD) Pty Ltd, an environmental and occupational hygiene consultancy based in Cairns, Queensland, working on construction, school and government building projects across Queensland including remote communities.
What we do
Licensed asbestos assessor services — air monitoring, clearance inspections and clearance certificates. Hazardous materials surveys, registers and management plans. Occupational hygiene monitoring. Mould assessment and remediation effectiveness assessment.
What we do not do
We do not carry out asbestos removal, we do not quote for it, we do not subcontract it, and we do not take referral fees. On any job where we monitor or clear, the regulations require exactly that separation.
Why an assessor publishes this
Most public information about asbestos removal is published by people who remove asbestos. That is not a criticism — they know the work — but it means the material tends to answer the question “why should you engage a professional” rather than “what does the law actually require”.
A licensed asbestos assessor is on the other side of that line by force of regulation. Under reg 475 and regs 473–474, an assessor who was involved in a removal — or who is part of a business that was — cannot monitor or clear that job. So we have nothing to sell at the end of the explanation, which we think makes it a better explanation.
What this site deliberately does not publish
Everything here was checked against primary sources where we could reach them. In several places we could not, and rather than publish a plausible figure or a guessed section number, we have left the gap and said so. The full list:
| Not published | Why |
|---|---|
| Dollar penalties against individual asbestos regulations | Could not be retrieved from the model regulations. Queensland expresses regulation offences in penalty units, so a dollar figure requires reading the units off the Queensland provision and multiplying by the current unit value. We publish the WHS Act penalty structure, which the regulator states directly |
| The Queensland provision behind the homeowner’s certificate | Both Queensland Government pages tie it to the Class B licensing threshold, pointing to a Queensland-specific subsection of s 487, but we could not confirm the subsection and will not guess one |
| Western Australian homeowner specifics | The WA legislation server would not return the Health (Asbestos) Regulations 1992, so WA residential rules and any fee-or-reward restriction are unverified |
| Victoria’s notification period | Reg 298 exists and is titled Notice of asbestos removal work, but we could not read the period. Do not assume it is five days because the model is |
| A retention period for clearance certificates | The Code does not state who must keep the certificate or for how long, and we could not verify the statutory wording of reg 474 |
| A regulation number for the 10 m² threshold | We could not confirm whether the figure sits in the Dictionary definition of Class B asbestos removal work or in the body of reg 487. The Code’s Table 1 is cited instead |
| A paragraph letter within reg 291 | Reg 291 captures work disturbing asbestos as high risk construction work, but we could not confirm the paragraph |
| Any removalist directory or recommendation | Publishing one would compromise the independence that makes the rest of this site worth reading |
We also flag, on the page where each appears, the four places where a regulator’s own guidance is looser than or inconsistent with the model Code: WorkSafe Queensland on the scope of Class A, the Code’s own “up to” versus “less than” 10 m² drafting, SafeWork SA on air monitoring for Class B work, and WorkSafe WA on who issues clearances.
Principal sources
Legislation
- Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth) — Chapter 8
- Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic) — Part 4.4
- Health (Asbestos) Regulations 1992 (WA)
Codes of practice and compliance codes
- Model Code of Practice — How to safely remove asbestos (July 2020) — the current edition, and the source of the Appendix B matrix on this site
- Model Code of Practice (October 2018)
- Model Code of Practice (December 2011)
- Queensland Code of Practice — How to safely remove asbestos 2021
- Queensland Code of Practice — How to manage and control asbestos in the workplace 2021
- Commonwealth Code of Practice — How to manage and control asbestos in the workplace (2015) — source of the exposure standard
- Model Code of Practice — Construction work — source of the SWMS requirements
- Safe Work Australia fact sheet — ‘Minor contamination’ of asbestos-containing dust or debris
- WorkSafe WA Code of Practice — How to safely remove asbestos (14 July 2022)
- WorkSafe Victoria compliance codes — Removing asbestos in workplaces; Managing asbestos in workplaces
Regulators — Queensland
- WorkSafe Queensland — asbestos licences
- WorkSafe Queensland — which businesses are licensed
- WorkSafe Queensland — training requirements
- WorkSafe Queensland — asbestos notifications
- WorkSafe Queensland — penalties
- WorkSafe Queensland — asbestos licensing and notification guide for applicants
- Queensland Government — asbestos removal work
- Queensland Government — homeowner’s certificate
- Queensland Government — legislation and codes of practice
Regulators — other jurisdictions
- Safe Work Australia — asbestos WHS duties
- Safe Work Australia — high risk construction work requiring a SWMS
- SafeWork SA — asbestos assessor licence guidance
- SafeWork NSW — asbestos assessor licence
- WorkSafe WA — asbestos law and guidance
- WorkSafe WA — asbestos licences
- WorkSafe Victoria — asbestos removal licences
- Asbestos Victoria — unlicensed asbestos removal
- NT WorkSafe — cleaning up asbestos-contaminated dust or debris
- Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency
- Asbestos Product Guide — summary of ACM production in Australia — source of the production and ban timeline
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, we would rather know. Two corrections have already been made to material we were working from: the regulation number for Class B licensing (it is 487, not 486 — 486 is the Class A exception provision), and the independence test, which does not exclude a connection with the person who commissioned the removal. Both are set out on the relevant pages.