The shielding characteristics of two concrete blocks, widely used in the building industry in Mexico have
been determined. These characteristics include the mass interaction coefficients, the linear attenuation
coefficients and the half-value layers. The energy-dispersed X-ray fluorescence shows that the percentage
mass content of each atom in the sample, and the atomic volume of the constituent elements of a
material, plays an important role in its shielding capabilities. The total linear attenuation coefficients and
the half-value layers were analyzed for a set of photon energies related to X-rays for diagnosis and cancer
treatment with linear accelerators. Our results show that the concrete blocks have similar photon
attenuation coefficients than the Portland concrete and better features than gypsum.