The essential guide to X-ray room wall thickness

Learn the ideal thickness of your X-ray room based on materials and equipment to ensure you keep patients, staff and the public safe from radiation.

If designing and building an X-ray room for your medical facility, ensuring safe X-ray practices requires careful consideration of several factors that comply with UK regulations.

And perhaps the most critical of factors is your X-ray room wall thickness. Without proper protection, electromagnetic radiation can harm people by damaging living cells and imposing severe health issues like increasing cancer risks.

In this piece, we discuss the importance of ensuring you have the correct wall thickness for your X-ray room design, the materials available, and what you can do if you have portable X-ray processes.

Understanding X-ray room wall thickness

The primary purpose of X-ray room walls is to protect people from radiation. Therefore, thickness and materials play a pivotal role in achieving this objective. Naturally, thicker walls will reduce or eliminate radiation levels passing through. However, the material needs to have the necessary density.

Next. It comes down to logistics, such as the type of X-ray equipment, how often it gets used, the radiation levels and the distance between the X-ray machine and those in the designated area. Understanding these aspects of your X-ray room wall thickness will ensure you keep patients, staff and the public safe when operating X-ray machines within your facility.

X-ray room wall materials

When considering your ideal X-ray room walls, the denser and thicker, the better. Therefore, you should start by selecting the best material. Here is a list of X-ray room wall materials that will be suitable to contain radiation:

• Lead
• Concrete
• Steel
• Barium Sulphate
• Boron-infused materials
• Composite materials

Lead is often used to line walls as it’s an incredibly dense metallic that radiation struggles to penetrate. Concrete and steel also provide suitable X-ray room wall materials but should be thicker than lead if they aim to offer the same radiation protection.

Then there are possible infused X-ray room wall constructions. Drywall, or gypsum board, is another option but has to contain the necessary density. Please note, that drywall is not a sufficiently dense enough material to protect from radiation and requires reinforcement from the previous examples listed.

X-ray room wall thickness for specific materials

Across the material options and specific types of X-ray rooms, you will need the following thickness levels:

• Lead-lined walls – 1mm-3.5mm
• Concrete – 150mm-350mm
• Steel – 3mm-6mm

Other composite material thicknesses for X-ray room walls depend on the materials within. For example, a lead-steel composite could range in thicknesses between 1.6mm-3mm for lead and 6mm-12mm for steel.

For general-purpose radiography of fluoroscopy, if you’re looking to use cement only, you require two layers:

• Primary concrete layer – 320mm
• Secondary layer – 230mm

Of all the materials for X-ray room walls, we recommend lining your walls with lead. Typical X-ray rooms require between 1mm-3.5mm but can remain lightweight when combined with other composite materials.

By taking this lead-lined protection approach, you increase the density between the partition and external walls and reduce the threat of radiation poisoning to a minimum.

X-ray room wall construction

Your X-ray room walls should contain the necessary thickness protection for at least 2.2 meters in height. Concrete walls should have two layers, and ensure when investing in cheaper composite materials, they contain the necessary density or have the recommended steel or lead lining.

If you’re opting for a barium-sulphate plaster wall, we recommend you follow this combination for your mixture:

• One-part coarse barium sulphate
• One-part fine barium sulphate
• One-part cement

When building your X-ray room, we suggest the following process:

• Cover all vertical C studs from floor to ceiling with a 50mm wide lead vertical strip. A self-adhesive lead strip is the most convenient for efficient and effective results.
• Finish the corners with the same process but apply 100mm of the lead strip.
• Screw your 2mm lead panels onto the frame with specialised screws and cover the screws with lead plugs.
• Ensure you overlap all the panels to avoid gaps for the radiation to escape.
• Repeat this process across the entire framework, and you have a radiation-proof room guaranteed.

Portable X-ray room protection

When X-ray processes are less routine, such as in small dental and veterinarian practices without designated X-ray rooms, portable X-ray protection screens are available to provide the necessary shielding. At Wolverson X-ray, we can supply mobile X-ray protection screens with solid sheet materials between a lead centre. Each screen offers complete radiation protection. Customised thicknesses and lengths are also available.

Speak to specialists in X-ray imaging and radiation protection

Wolverson X-ray has always built its ethos on providing high-quality products that either perform or protect in the field of medical imaging equipment.

Established for over 85 years, we are the UK’s leading independent supplier of innovative imagining equipment and radiation protection solutions. From chiropractors, dentists, hospitals and veterinarians, we have supplied our products nationwide to receive outstanding results.

So, if you need advice on your X-ray room wall thickness or any other X-ray-related questions, contact us today.  

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