Breath Alcohol Test
A breathalyzer is a device for estimating the blood alcohol content (BAC) from a breath sample of a person. This device is recognized to be the approved non-evidentiary screening device in the parliament of Canada. These breathalyzers, misspelled breathazlyzers , proves to be more useful to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety and the first sep towards inventing breath analyzer was made by Anstie in 1984 when he found out that the very small concentration of alcohol were emitted out through the breath. But the first practically used device to detect the alcohol in roadside was called as the drunkometer used by the police which was developed by Professor Harger in 1938. The breath sample of the drivers and the motorists were pumped into a small chamber containing the potassium permanganate with which the alcohol traces react and produce a colour change. The colour change is the direct measure of concentration of the alcohol in the breath. Hence greater the colour change greater is the intensity of alcohol.
The breath analysis played a major role once in 1927 when a police surgeon of England, Dr. Gorsky proved that a suspect was drunk by asking him to inflate a football bladder with his breath as the 2 liters of the man’s breath had 1.5 ml of ethanol. But it is acknowledged world wide that it was Dr. Robert Borkenstein (1912–2002), a captain with the Indiana State Police and later a professor at Indiana University at Bloomington the first to invent a device that estimates the blood alcohol content based on the breath sample. The current concept of breath alcohol test is woven round this concept.
Then evolved a device that works under the principle of chemical oxidation and photometry to calculate the concentration of alcohol in blood in the hands of Borkenstein In 1954 and this was later called as the breathalyzer. There were variations in the test results when examining the individuals consuming the same amount of alcohol and the factor for these changes were gender, weight, and genetic pre-disposition. This is just the primary screening test and they do not depict the exact concentration of` alcohol but indirectly judges the BAC.
The major drawback with the old breathalyzers is their unreliability , these devices not only detect the ethanol but also other substances which are alike in molecular structure or reactivity found in the alcoholic beverages .Here the breath sample is passed through the potassium dichromate which then turns the colour in the process of transformation of ethanol into acetic acid and this colour change estimates the alcohol content but the solution is a strong oxidizer and hence oxidizes many OH groups causing false positives.
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August 31st, 2009 at 10:47 am
I have aquestion concerning probation use breathalyzers.does results taking a breatherlyzer and testing 0.20 ,0.14 and 0.07 in a 10 minutes period of time a acurate result of drinking alcohol or more likly to be a result in taking a over the counter cold medicine such as nightqual in a time of 20 minutes before testing? why and why not?thanks for any information!
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