My wife and I just bought a new home, and are putting laminate flooring in our children's room. We removed the original carpet and made an attempt at removing the pad. Apparently when the original owners of the home had the carpet pad installed, some of the padding was glued and some was not. While removing a piece of the glued on padding, the underlying tile stuck to the bottom of the pad and ripped off the floor. We found out that it was ASBESTOS tile, that’s why the padding was glued, and should not have been broken. The section that broke of is about 12”x15” (a whole tile and about a 3” piece of the one next to it). My question is:

Since the tile that stuck to the pad is still in one piece (with the exception of the 3” attachment from the adjacent tile), can we just put the pad with the stuck tile back in its place, put the laminate flooring over the pad, and not worry about possible effects from the tile that ripped off the floor?

Hello. My advice to you is to remove all of it immediately. Asbestos should not be in your house. Now I will try not to confuse you but, There are 2 major types of Asbestos.

Friable & Non-Friable

Friable is any type of material containing asbestos that may crumble under hand pressure.

Non-friable is any type of material that usually doesn't crumble under pressure and is not that much concern.

Anything like flooring, roofing, tile or anything like that is category 2 asbestos and may likely become friable.

So, everything will apply for handling as normal asbestos, but it doesn't need to be bagged or wrapped.

I would suggest calling your local landfill and finding out where you can dispose of the waste and then remove all the tiles preferably with a respirator mask or something. The you can worry about retiling it later. It could cause cancer if not handled now.

Make sure that the landfill knows what kind it is so they can take precaution with it.
I hope this helps!

Let me know!