 Even small amounts of ozone can cause ozone cracking in many polymers over time, in addition to the damage by the radiation itself.In some gaseous ionisation detectors, radiation damage to gases plays an important role in the device's ageing, especially in devices exposed for long periods to high intensity radiation, e.g.detectors for the Large Hadron Collider or the Geiger–Müller tube

Ionization processes require energy above 10 eV, while splitting covalent bonds in molecules and generating free radicals requires only 3-4 eV.