Seventeen years after regional legislation established a framework for its gradual elimination, the Azores Asbestos Platform lists 3,149 buildings containing asbestos. Nearly 90 percent are privately owned, while São Jorge and Faial together account for almost half of all identified properties.
Some public-health problems announce themselves through emergencies; others remain quietly embedded in walls, roofs and pipes, inherited from another era of construction. Asbestos belongs to the second category. More than a decade and a half after the Azores adopted legislation addressing its gradual elimination, the Regional Government has revealed that 3,149 buildings across the archipelago remain registered on the Plataforma Amianto as containing asbestos-bearing materials.
The figures, released in response to questions from the Left Bloc, show that the overwhelming majority are private properties: 2,812 buildings, or 89.3 percent of the total. Another 200 belong to the Autonomous Region, 99 to municipalities, 26 to the Portuguese State and 12 to associations. Geographically, the distribution is striking. São Jorge and Faial together contain 49.7 percent of all registered buildings, with the municipalities of Velas and Horta accounting for particularly significant concentrations.
The persistence of asbestos in public buildings has renewed political scrutiny of a problem that has accompanied the Region for approximately seventeen years. The BE recalled previous commitments, including a program announced in 2014 that envisaged eliminating asbestos from schools by 2017, and pointed to more recent concerns involving the PSP police station in Ponta Delgada, pending interventions in the operating block of the Hospital do Divino Espírito Santo and concerns raised by parents at schools in Angra do Heroísmo. Among the public facilities identified by the Government as falling within legally required removal provisions are the Ribeira Grande Elementary and Secondary School, Biscoitos Integrated Elementary School, Jerónimo Emiliano de Andrade Secondary School, the HDES, the Vila do Porto Health Center on Santa Maria, and the Nordeste and Vila Franca do Campo health centers on São Miguel.
Removal has nevertheless been taking place. According to the Regional Government, the Regional Labor Inspectorate authorized 170 asbestos-removal operations between 2021 and 2025, covering a combined 85,011 square meters. In 2025 alone, the Inspectorate’s activity report recorded 30 authorizations involving 125 workers and more than 16,000 square meters. Interventions have included the Hospital da Horta, EBI da Lagoa, municipal swimming pools and multipurpose facilities, the Cerrado do Bailão Sports Pavilion, EB 2,3 das Capelas and social-housing developments in Angra do Heroísmo.
Yet the numbers require an important distinction. A building’s presence on the Asbestos Platform does not, by itself, mean that its occupants are being exposed to a dangerous concentration of asbestos fibers. The Regional Government stresses that the principal danger arises when asbestos-containing materials are damaged, deteriorating or improperly disturbed, allowing microscopic fibers to become airborne and inhaled. Citing occupational-safety guidance, the Government maintains that asbestos-cement materials in reasonable condition generally present a low exposure risk. That distinction matters: an inventory identifies where asbestos exists; a risk assessment determines the urgency and nature of intervention.
It is precisely the question of urgency that remains politically contentious. The BE asked for information on air-quality monitoring, risk assessments, investment and a timetable for complete removal from public buildings, while questioning whether the obligations established under Regional Legislative Decree 12/2009/A have been fully met. The Regional Government responded that there is no single timetable for eliminating all remaining asbestos. Instead, interventions are scheduled individually according to the material’s condition, assessed risk and the technical and financial capacity of the entity responsible for each property.
That approach may reflect the complexity of managing thousands of buildings, but seventeen years after the regional legislation was adopted, the scale of the inventory ensures that asbestos will remain a public-policy issue. The most important number may not ultimately be 3,149, because the vast majority of those buildings are privately owned and presence does not necessarily equal immediate danger. More revealing will be how many high-risk structures remain, how quickly they are identified and treated, and whether schools, hospitals and other heavily used public facilities receive the necessary priority.
Asbestos is, after all, a material inherited from a time when its usefulness was understood far better than its consequences. The challenge for the Azores is no longer discovering that legacy. It is deciding, building by building and risk by risk, how long that legacy should be allowed to remain.
Based on a Story by journalist Diogo Simões Pires in Correio dos Açores-Natalino Viveiros, director. The Photos are also from CA.