At least in the US (and this probably is different from Europe) it matters a huge amount how the asbestos is exposed to the environment. Asbestos that's sealed up generally gets (a) labelled so noone cuts into it (b) sealed up even further - but if it's exposed, the evaluation is more about "can it get into the air" (sealing is again the preferred step, epoxy over tile, that sort of thing) - actually removing it is a last resort. So "mere detection" is a really small part of the problem.
(Of course, the place I've dealt with this the most was a former post office building from the late 1930s - we didn't really need tests, a historian would probably have just said "of course you have asbestos" :-) It does expose an interesting problem with the labeling part, though: USPS as an ancient federal agency has its own rules for things and had a distinct asbestos markers - an A in a point-down triangle - which we fortunately found documentation for, it isn't public record.)
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At least in the US (and this probably is different from Europe) it matters a huge amount how the asbestos is exposed to the environment. Asbestos that's sealed up generally gets (a) labelled so noone cuts into it (b) sealed up even further - but if it's exposed, the evaluation is more about "can it get into the air" (sealing is again the preferred step, epoxy over tile, that sort of thing) - actually removing it is a last resort. So "mere detection" is a really small part of the problem.
(Of course, the place I've dealt with this the most was a former post office building from the late 1930s - we didn't really need tests, a historian would probably have just said "of course you have asbestos" :-) It does expose an interesting problem with the labeling part, though: USPS as an ancient federal agency has its own rules for things and had a distinct asbestos markers - an A in a point-down triangle - which we fortunately found documentation for, it isn't public record.)