Are "lead blocks" used for anything these days, or do they even exist?

Question

When I raced Bandoleero cars (at the time I was 9-13) we used to weight down the cars by putting some kind of metal blocks into the interior so that the car would conform to the scale requirements. A lot of people colloquially referred to them as lead blocks. Were they really made of lead? I have a hard time imagining that such a hazardous and dangerous substance would be expended for such use as that. The blocks were simply gray and heavy.

And my father has a bunch of similar blocks as those at his workplace (he owns a rigging company) and he regularly uses them to weight things down and such.

Are the blocks made of lead or are they just iron or steel or something?

Answer 1

I bet they were made of lead. Not sure what you mean by "such a hazardous and dangerous substance"...

Lead has hazards, but so do many materials. The uses where it presented a danger; e.g. paint, plumbing, etc, have been cut out. Using it as a dense weight material isn't a big deal.

Literal lead bricks are used in the nuclear industry to build shielding around radioactive material storage areas to prevent radiation from reaching other areas. They are used to build shields around sensitive radiation detectors to keep external background radiation from affecting the readings they get off of very low level sources.

The list goes on and on; see the attached link for many, many more.

Answer 2

today lead blocks are used by the mafia to drown people who cant pay protection