J.A. Simmons and D.E. Watt. The core of this short book is chapter 5, which extends biophysical modeling results originated in the 1980's. Evidence is presented that a main determinant of charged particle effectiveness for killing mammalian cells is lambda, the mean free path for linear primary ionization, essentially the average distance between energy deposition events along the primary track. They suggest that delta ray action rarely produces DSBs at locations away from a primary ion track, and that the average energy per delta ray has little biological importance.
Earlier chapters emphasize historical aspects of radiation protection.
In chapter 4 the authors survey other biophysical models that are related to their own. It is very useful to have various models thus interconnected. However, the model descriptions are introductory rather than definitive, and the reader may be perplexed by discrepancies between equations and text unless the original papers are consulted. Chapter 6 briefly describes an over-all model of radiation damage, with most endpoints taken to be directly proportional to the number of unrepaired DSBs. The treatment has a number of quite puzzling features.