Can I step over pink wool like insulation in the attic?

Question

This is related to this thread How do I get rid of this ceiling finish and what is its name?

I have Artex on the ceiling and I am thinking about removing the drywall entirely and replacing it with brand new in an attempt to minimize the air born artex which might contain azbestos.

My strategy would be to go in the attic, remove the insulation from above the area where I need to replace the drywall and then try to unscrew the drywall panels one by one after determining their size by pushing through a knife from above right between the drywall panels.

Now I guess I will need to find out how my ceiling beams are oriented and try to step on them on my way to the area in question here but here is my challenge with that: the pink insulation seems to be easily compressible and it does not come back which I guess reduces the insulation capacity big time; the other thing is that under the ping wool mentioned above there is a layer of paper with insulation in between as you can see in the picture.

An now the questions:
-can I step on that insulation on my way to the work area,can I safely remove that insulation and put it back ?
-do you see any issues with my approach to removing the drywall ?

Answer 1

The only place I would step is on the ceiling joist. The only thing that holds the insulation is the drywall. If you step on it you will probably end up back in the room below. A foot print on the insulation that covers the joist will not hurt anything. Before I would remove the old dry wall, I would mark the location of the ceiling joist on the existing drywall and install 1/4 inch drywall over the old. I have done this several times and it works fine.