The biological effectiveness of a portion of the neutron spectrum from nuclear devices, compared with that of X radiation, was determined using decrease in thymic weight and decrease in the lymphocyte count in the peripheral blood as the indicators of tissue damage. Comparing the ratios of biological effectiveness observed using thymic weight loss with similar data reported previously for thermal neutron radiation indicated that a 1.6-fold increase in proton specific ionization was accompanied by no more than a fourfold increase in biological effect. The neutron radiation employed was less effective in decreasing the lymphocyte count in the peripheral blood than it was in producing thymic weight loss, indicating that ratios for neutron effectiveness can differ for similar tissues in the small mammal as well as in lower organisms used in previous experiments.
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Carter et al. (1954) studied this question.