|Table 1. Tissue Weighting Factors (WT) for Individual Tissues
and Organs| |Tissue or Organ||Tissue Weighting Factor (WT|
|Gonads (testes or ovaries)||0.20| |Red bone marrow||0.12| |**
The remainder is composed of the following additional tissues
and organs: adrenal, brain, upper large intestine, small
intestine, kidney, muscle, pancreas, spleen, thymus and uterus.|
The tissue weighting factor (WT) is an important unit of
radiation measurement that weights the equivalent dose in a
particular tissue or organ in terms of its relative contribution
to the total deleterious effects resulting from uniform
irradiation of the whole body. This weighting factor takes
account of the probability of fatal cancer, the probability of
nonfatal cancer, weighted for severity, and the average length
of life lost due to an induced cancer. The values shown in Table
1 were developed from a reference population of equal numbers of
both sexes and a wide range of ages. In the definition of
effective dose they apply to workers, to the