Legislation on asbestos

Royal Decree 396/2006, of 31 March, through which applicable health and safety minimum provisions are established to works with risk of exposure to asbestos .

It is the basic standard of application in Spain to protect the hard-working human health front the exposure to asbestos during the work. The technical Guide of the INSST gives criteria and recommendations to provide the application of this Royal Decree

This Royal Decree is to be modified by the Directive (EU) 2023/2668, that it owed be adopted before 21 December 2025. This modification gives priority to the dropped out of the asbestos when dealing with other manipulation ways of the asbestos and among other new features, reduction to the tenth part the limit value, happens of 0.1 fibres/cm3 to 0.01 fibres/cm3 average at 8.

The European Commission has drawn up some "Guidelines for the management of health and safety risks related to asbestos at work" to facilitate the application of said Directive. These guidelines offer a compilation of good practices in the management of asbestos-containing materials (ACMs) aimed at helping companies on how to prioritise asbestos removal over other forms of handling when assessing exposure risk. They also provide sector-specific solutions.

To works with asbestos also them are of application:

• RD 665/1997, of 12 May, on the protection of workers against risks related to exposure to carcinogenic agents at work
• RD 374/2001, of 6 April, on the protection of the health and safety of workers against risks related to chemical agents at work
• RD 171/2004 on health and safety obligations in business activity coordination
• Law 22/2011 on removal of hazardous waste

The Act 7/2022 establishes the obligation to town councils of elaborating a census of facilities and buildings of its municipality (private and public) with ACM together with a calendar to plan its retreat. In 2028 must be managed public facilities with major risk.