Abstract
The various changes occuring in sperm are often used to estimate the effects of toxic substances in the environment, for the reasons that sperm are the experimental materials concerning to the genetic effects and we can get them easily and repeatedly. As the environmental external ionizing radiation and radioactive elements in the environment are the factors to induce various effects on human body; it is likely to use sperm to estimate the effects of these factors on human body. The present experiment was carried out to evaluate whether the morphological or histochemical changes in sperm were of use to estimate the effects of radiation in the environment health physically, or not. X-rays and tritiated water were used in the present experiment. The observed effects in sperm were the reduction in sperm, morphological changes of sperm head, and the incidence of α-glycerolphophate dehydrogenase (α-GPD) deficient sperm. The results showed that the incidence of the α-GPD deficient sperm was the most suitable index to show the effects of ionizing radiation in three observed changes in sperm, because this change is hardly observed in the normal unirradiated mice and the incidence of α-GPD deficient sperm increased linearly till 1.5 Gy, that is, the relation was shown by the equation: y (%, incidence)=3.07×(Gy, dose).
