The Microdosimetry of Radon Daughters and its Significance

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Abstract
The value of the quality factor for radon daughter alpha particles is of some societal significance. The quality factor is usually taken to be the result of folding a radiation quality descriptor function with an appropriate weighting function. In this work we (a) calculate radiation quality descriptors (microdosimetric spectra) as a function of depth in the epithelium, (b) calculate a relevant weighting factor, QT(y) for oncogenic transformation, and (c) fold these together to get an estimate of the low dose relative effectiveness of the alpha particles as a function of depth. The results show a considerable variation with depth, and are also very sensitive to the saturation characteristics of QT(y), implying that more experimental data are needed in the range from 150 to 350 keV.µm-1.

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