Lead is an efficient photon shield, but at much higher cost than Ledite, and it does not attenuate the neutrons associated with greater than 10MeV accelerators. In fact, lead can become a source for increased neutron fluence within the room through photo-neutron reactions in the lead barrier.

However, Atomic provides lead as a supplemental shield for applications requiring special design characteristics such as rooms with limited vertical height (where lead would be used to reduce the primary barrier height), and rooms that require additional shielding in addition to the Ledite block.