Quality Factor

Since some types of radiation are more efficient at producing biological effects than other types (e.g., alphas more than betas), the absorbed dose (rad) is not necessarily related to the biological effect, so a quality factor is used to account for these variations. The quality factor for betas, gammas and x-rays is 1. The quality factor for alphas is 20 and, for neutrons, it can vary from 2 to 11 depending on the energy of the neutron. This means that alphas and neutrons produce more biological damage than betas or gammas for the same absorbed dose.

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