Proton radiobiology and uncertainties.

This paper briefly reviews proton radiobiology. Clinical applications of protons produced by accelerators have led to a significant biological literature that contributes to our goal of estimating the proton shielding requirements for human interplanetary missions. Protons are primarily a low-LET radiation with biological effects much like gamma radiation. There are however data indicating enhanced biological effectiveness for small doses of very low energy (<10 MeV) stopping protons, and some limited data for extremely high energy protons (>0.5 GeV).