With lead recently classified as a Substance of Very High Concern by the EU under REACH regulations, Knauf says its Safeboard is ‘the ideal lead-free plasterboard for X-ray environments’.
Fully tested by the Health Protection Agency, Safeboard is an X-ray-resistant plasterboard with a barium sulphate core, said to effectively and significantly reduce the amount of lead needed within X-ray shielding partitions and, in many cases, to eliminate the need for its use.
The distinctive yellow barium sulphate core is ‘the vital ingredient which blocks X-rays across the entire surface area’. Each board is rigorously tested to ensure radiation tightness, making the product suitable for hospital, dental, and veterinary practice use. Installable without specialist construction skills, it can simply be scored and snapped, and then fixed into place, before the application of Knauf Safeboard Joint Filler, and finishing with Knauf Airless spray-applied plaster.
Some 200 m2 of Knauf Safeboard used at the Peninsula Dental School in Plymouth was given a vote of confidence by the NHS radiology department that witnessed the installation. The architect on the project, Rich Smith of Architects Design Group, said: “Safeboard was clearly superior to the alternatives.”
Knauf Safeboard is fully fire-resistant, and achieves ‘excellent acoustic performance’.
