Although asbestos is now a banned material in many industrialised countries, the threat lingers on in the ceilings, walls and floors of old buildings – affecting workers who may inadvertently disturb asbestos and make the toxic fibres airborne.

Professor Paul Kaye, a member of the team that developed the new detection method at the University of Hertfordshire’s School of Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics, said: “By exploiting a unique magnetic property of asbestos, we developed a new detection method which can provide on-site, real-time identification of the dangerous asbestos fibres.”

Together with colleagues in the UK and Spain, prototype units have been developed and are undergoing field trials at various asbestos removal operations locations.

The new detection method was developed as part of the FP7 project “ALERT”, with funding from the European Commission ‘Research for SMEs’ grant FP7-SME-2008-2.