OBJECTIVE To throw light on human exposure to domestic radon and radon progeny, the effects of low doses of alpha-particle irradiation on normal human lung epithelial cells has been studied. At such low exposure levels the concept of dose is inadequate due to the stochastic variation in the number of alpha-particle traversals per cell. The objective of the current study was to establish an accurate survival curve for human lung epithelial cells with absolute determination of the exact number of alpha-particle traversals of individual cells. METHODS Irradiation of L132 cells growing in tracketch detector-based cell dishes, was performed using a collimated alpha-particle beam from a 210Po source. The number of alpha-particle traversals through each individual cell was scored by using a technique of retrospective track-etch dosimetry. This technique is based upon image matching and mapping of corresponding cell and alpha-particle track images. The spatial resolution of the hit determination procedure was +/-0.9/microm. RESULTS Surviving fractions of cells (SF) showed strict dependence on the number of nuclear traversals (n), with SF(n)= a exp(-bn), a=0.957 (+/- 0.046), b = 0.587 (+/- 0.059), R2 =98.8%. No significant dependence on the number of nuclear membrane traversals (m) or the number of cytoplasm traversals (c) was observed.