Vulcan's Blog

Lead Shielding Helps Fight Cancer

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One of the most satisfying things about working with lead products is knowing the parts we make play a role in successfully detecting and fighting cancer. We work closely with manufacturers to find ways to develop and manufacture x-ray protection equipment more cost-effectively. The more affordable cancer detection can become, the more of it the medical industry can make available. This increases the opportunity for early detection—the key to successfully curing patients’ cancers.

Playing a role in that kind of outcome makes you feel good about coming to work.

One of our employees told me that he recently visited a radiography clinic for x-ray tests. He told me that when he got into to full body scan x-ray machine he saw it was produced by one of our customers. When he learned the model number of the machine, he was surprised to discover that it was a machine that he helped make parts for. “I felt good knowing the x-ray machine had our parts in it and I knew the machine would do the job right.”

Today, with a number of customers, our company plays a larger role than simply making radiation protection parts that go into diagnostic x-ray devices. We now work closely with the design engineers at customer organizations earlier in the manufacturing process. That way, we get to identify potential production problems early and create opportunities for speeding up the process by cutting unnecessary design iterations for many of our radiation shielding components. With this approach, we play a more direct role in the design of the lead components and assemblies we make. One by-product of this approach is that we can help customers manufacture their products more affordably.