MarShield™Lead brick shielding provides the best choice for construction where temporary, permanent shields or storage areas are required, offering you the flexibility in your design and construction choices. Lead Bricks are ideal for adding additional shielding to existing rooms and can be used in new construction as a method to reduce wall or ceiling thickness to achieve space savings. Cast from 99.94% pure virgin high quality lead as a standard or when more hardness in the bricks is required antimony is added. Our bricks are relatively smooth, clean and have a non-porous surface. Lead bricks can be used for walls, coves, glove-boxes, hot cells or partitions, the transportation of radioactive materials, and nuclear shielding or simply as ballast weight. Bricks are available in a wide range of sizes, thicknesses and shapes to suit your application. They are commonly used for shielding when sheet lead is impractical or not available in sizes or thicknesses you may require. Straight or interlocking styles are available from our stock.

Interlocking Lead Bricks:

MarShield™ offers interlocking Chevron style type lead bricks for maximum protection where the highest level of shielding is required for X-ray Beta and Gamma Shielding.

Our lead bricks can be easily erected, modified, disassemble and relocated in the field to create protective walls systems and cells to suit your application. The unique interlocking "V" shape tongue and groove configuration permits the bricks to interlock into one another preventing the leakage of radiation through gaps as commonly found in straight lead bricks. The interlocking provides a more stable and sturdier wall system aiding in the prevention of the wall toppling over. A convenient solution for providing an efficient and tighter fit shielding when stacking or building wall systems.

Straight Lead Bricks:

MarShield™ offers Straight type lead bricks for radiation shielding where interlocking bricks will not suit your application. They can be cut on site in any direction without the fear of losing the interlocking capability. A Double row stacked behind the first in a staggered pattern can combat the loss of radiation commonly known to happen through the first row gaps.

DIAGNOSTIC RADIATION SHIELDING CONSIDERATIONS

All Lead Radiation Shielding requirements should be calculated and determined by a certified professional radiation health physicist based on the following information.

ENERGY:
The end user must determine the output of the X-Ray machine. (KvP). Usually, the higher the output of the machine, the higher the lead shielding requirement.

EXPOSURE:  
The end-user must determine the exposure per hour, day, week and year and the maximum patient exposure accumulated and projected from radiation exposure, as radiation is cumulative and unnecessary extra exposure can cause biological damage on the cellular level. Each state or province has its own maximum permissible exposure level in addition to natural radiation exposure an average person is exposed to through environmental factors like ultra violet solar, radon gas and atmospheric radiation. Ensure you check with local governing health and safety laws and codes for current compliance requirements.

ORIENTATION/DIRECTION:
All wall sections shall be calculated by your physicists in relation to the direction of the primary beam target. (Direction where it is aimed) and scatter or secondary radiation of the x-ray machine, as well as the floor or wall.

DISTANCE:
Radiation dissipates as the distance increases; usually the closer a partition is to the radiation / x-ray source, the higher the lead shielding needed.

OCCUPANCY OR ROOM USEAGE:  
A critical and very important factor in your calculations is the amount of time, per day, a surrounding or adjoiningroom common to the x-ray room will be occupied and used by your personnel or public. An example would be a simple storage room, which would have a lower use or occupancy factor, compared to a waiting room or office that would have higher use. Therefore, it is calculated room by room for all rooms connected or that are common to the x-ray room. If there is no occupancy potential, then typically no shielding will be specified or required. (I.E. Floor or roof of a single story building with no basement).

CONSTRUCTION MATERIAL:
Often a physicist will take into account the existing or the proposed construction materials used or to be used of the wall/partition or flooring material, as heavy density materials can attenuate (shield) radiation to a certain degree, such as concrete, steel, plaster, block or multiple layers of drywall. This may reduce, or in some instances, eliminate your lead shielding requirements,   depending on the values of the previous factors to be considered.

If you have a recent project that incorporated our products, we'd like to see it. Please send us photos and descriptions showing our products; your work could be featured as a case study on our website or in our newsletter. Send any materials to sales@marsmetal.com