Semen quality and reproductive health of young Czech men exposed to seasonal air pollution.

This study of male reproductive health in the Czech Republic resulted from community concern about potential adverse effects of air pollution. We compared young men (18 years of age) living in Teplice, a highly industrialized district with seasonally elevated levels of air pollution, to those from Prachatice, a rural district with relatively clean air. Surveys were scheduled for either late winter, after the season of higher air pollution, or at the end of summer, when pollution was low.

[Air pollution and sperm quality].

Background: It has been described that an exposition of males to chemical substances may significantly impoverish quality and quantity of produced spermatozoa. The aim of our study was to test whether the polluted air in the Teplice district has negative effects on the quality of sperm of males living in this district.

Methods And Results: 325 males 18-year-old living in the Teplice district and in the control district of Prachatice were tested.

Dairy cattle as a bioindicator of exposure to genotoxic substances in a heavily polluted area in northern Bohemia.

The exposure of dairy cattle to genotoxic agents in two districts with different levels of environmental pollution was estimated using cytogenetic analysis of bovine peripheral lymphocytes. The Teplice district represented an industrialized area where the air pollution rate is extremely high mainly in the winter, and the Prachatice district--an agricultural area with a relatively low level of pollution. The Ames test was used to examine feed samples for the content of mutagenic substances.

A new Robertsonian translocation in cattle, rob(16;20).

A new centric fusion translocation, rob(16;20), was discovered in a phenotypically normal bull. C-banding revealed the dicentric nature of this centric fusion. This bull is a descendant of a German red pied bull and a Czechoslovakian red pied cow.

Cytogenetic monitoring of farm animals under conditions of environmental pollution.

Cytogenetic examinations were carried out in 13 cattle farms, two herds of horses, one stag farm and 13 pig farms in areas with different levels of environmental contamination. The frequency of aberrant cells per 100 mitoses was 3.67 +/- 1.

Somatic chromosome mutations and morphological abnormalities in sperms of boars.

Frequencies of chromosomally aberrant peripheral blood lymphocytes and morphologically abnormal spermatozoa were investigated in 10 boars from each of 11 A.I. centres.

[Asymmetry of the digits in pigs as a hereditarily conditioned variation in the anatomic structure of the extremities].

As follows from the population statistical investigation performed within the management information system, defects of the anatomic structure of the feet occur in the pig population of all breeds and cross combinations kept in the Czech Socialist Republic: the frequency of this occurrence is relatively higher than 4.4% (1984) and 3.8% (1985) of all litters affected by some of the genetic defects.