When looking at X-ray attenuation intermediate - high Z materials have a stepping point in the attenuation curve (link shows Iron, discontinuity at ~7E-3 MeV). What is the cause of that step?
http://physics.nist.gov/PhysRefData/XrayMassCoef/ElemTab/z26.html
This step is due to the K absorption edge of Fe which is at 7.1120 keV or at 1.7433 Å.
K absorption edge of each material, as shown in the above link for iron, is the point which can be used for constructing efficient radiation shields with lower atomic number materials. On the other hand, k- edge can be used for fabrication of some special filters (e.g. filters for mammography or filters for radiography with contrast media).
To complete Mortazavi´s comment. The typical mammography spectrum is nearly totally reduced to the characteristic X-rays from Mo due to special Mo-K-edge filtering. As for the shielding clothes you must extreme take care, that the produced characteristic X-raxs from the shielding material (half value layer about 1-2 cm) don´t expose the skin of the user due to the nearness (small distance) to the wearer.
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