u/GridmanDarkly

Located in US-PA

Hey everybody, need some opinions that will not be treated like absolute fact.

My mother had a water leak above the entryway to her garage from her basement, ruined the carpet so I pulled it out and began cleaning everything up. Some of the tiles were chipped so I decided I was just going to expose the concrete which would make more sense coming in from the garage. Anyway, I plan on tiling later this year so it didn't seem like a big deal to leave the concrete exposed for a few months.

While using a pole attached carbide scraper I noticed the tile chips apart very easily. I was dumb enough to think that her house being built in the early '70s meant we were passed asbestos at that point.

My questions:

1. Does this appear to be asbestos to those familiar with it? I did not notice any mastic or black glue, so these tiles would appear to be self-adhesive. They are 12x12 and could not possibly be older than 1970.

2. Is the remaining white adhesive that keeps coming up safe to leave on the ground for the moment? I wetted the surface and wiped over it with a paper towel for about an hour and it's only a 4x4 space and no matter what, the towel keeps coming up dirty so at this point the glue is just continuously coming off and I don't want to mess with it further.

3. Would it be safe to put some entryway rugs over this for a month or two until we can get this sorted out? Her finances are limited so we can't suddenly just spend a ton of money.