High-Speed X-Ray Diffraction Analysis of Asbestos (Chrysotile) Using Wide-Range High-Speed Detector "OneSight"

Introduction

Asbestos is a material that has long been widely used as a building material due to its excellent heat and acid resistance. However, its use has gradually been banned because of widespread recognition of its adverse health effects. Due to revisions of Japan's Industrial Safety and Health Act enforcement ordinance and Ordinance on Prevention of Asbestos Hazards in 2006, the regulatory limit value for asbestos content became more stringent. Accordingly, the current content by weight of asbestos in any product is specified to be less than 0.1 %. As X-ray diffraction has been adopted as the official method for measurement of asbestos content, the two official methods specified for its analysis in Japan are JIS A 1481-2: Determination of asbestos in building material products – Part 2: Sampling and qualitative analysis for judgment of existence of containing asbestos, and JIS A 1481-3: Determination of asbestos in building material products – Part 3: Quantitative analysis of containing asbestos by X-ray diffraction method. Here, using the new wide-range, high-speed detector OneSight, we introduce an example of high- speed quantitative analysis of the chrysotile, one kind of asbestos.

August 1, 2014 GMT