The Biggest Con In Utah Law Enforcement: The Effect of "Mouth" Alcohol On Contamination Of Breath Samples And Correspondingly Higher Intoxilyzer Results

As explaind by David Rosenbloom

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis: The biggest con in the breath alcohol analysis game is the assertion by law enforcement that the CMI Intoxilyzers contain a "Slope Detector" that detects mouth alcohol, and that this detector will abort breath testing when the machine senses alcohol present in the mouth. Simply put this is a lie. As one of two attorneys in the State of Utah that actually owns a CMI Intoxilyzer 5000, I can promise you that I can fool any Utah based CMI Intoxilyzer by using mouthwash containing alcohol. The truth is that there is no such physical thing as a "slope detector" although you would be amazed at how many seemingly intelligent prosecutors, policemen and judges believe that the thing exists. What there is in every CMI machine is a mathematical construct that looks for a high alcohol curve during the first two seconds of breath testing that is followed by a sharp decrease for the following three or more seconds; this is what the machine interprets as "mouth alcohol" contamination, and yes, the machine will abort the test and indicate same if it measures such a wide differential. HOWEVER, the machine is blind to the curve if the subject blows slowly and consistently as instructed, despite a VERY high mouth alcohol level, OR the curve of the breath alcohol content is not as steep, as when someone micro-burps during the blow after the two (2) second window. Suffice to say that I can "beat" any machine in the state with no alcohol in my system, and just listerine in my mouth; and similar "slope detector" hoaxes have been performed on You-Tube with everything from Wonderbread and no alcohol, to mouthwash - demonstrating that the machine is a joke when it comes to measuring mouth alcohol. This is why it is possible to "fool" the machine by hyperventilating before blowing, and then slowly breathing into the machine, rather than blowing hard like the police instruct such that the subject's diaphram compresses the stomach and results in emitting alcohol vapor which readily binds with water vapor present in the trachea to increase the breath result past the actual blood alcohol point.

Feeney, Horne & Williamson, Sobriety Testing: Intoxilyzers and Listerine Antiseptic, 52 Police Chief 70 (1985)

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis: The CMI machines can be fooled every single time by mouth alcohol, demonstrating what people have been saying for years about CMI machines; that they are remarkably sensitive to mouth alcohol spoilation of the breath sample, and mouth alcohol is readily acknowledged to be the largest single problem for accurate breath testing because almost 80% of the population over 25 years of age has some leakage of the esophageal sphincter resulting in contamination to a lesser or greater extent of the individual breath sample with stomach gases containing alcohol.

Mouthwash rinse per label (30 sec)
.43 breath sample after 1 min
.20 breath sample after 3 min
.11 breath sample after 5 min
.01 breath sample after 10 min (one guy had .03 still)

Gaylarde, Stambuk & Morgan, Reductions in Breath Ethanol Readings in Normal Male Volunteers Following Mouth Rinsing with Water at Differing Temperatures, 22 Alcohol & Alcoholism 113 (1987)

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis: People should be told to rinse! Rinsing with cold water lowered BAC level twice as much. Reduces salivary ethanol in oral cavity. Relates to Hlastala's paradigm. As air passes over oral saliva which is cooled and diluted there is less vapor pressure and as a result breath testing results rise accordingly.

Blood ethanol concentrations were measured sequentially, over a period of hours, using a Lion AE-D2 alcolmeter, in 12 healthy male subjects given oral ethanol 0.5 g/kg body wt. Readings were taken before and after rinsing the mouth with water at varying temperatures. Mouth rinsing resulted in a reduction in the alcolmeter readings at all water temperatures tested. The magnitude of the reduction was greater after rinsing with water at lower temperatures. This effect occurs because rinsing cools the mouth and dilutes retained saliva. This finding should be taken into account whenever breath analysis is used to estimate blood ethanol concentrations in experimental situations.

Abstract courtesy of www.pubmed.org - A service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

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Harding, et. al., The Effect of Dentures and Denture Adhesives on Mouth Alcohol Retention, 37 Journal of Forensic Science 999, 1003 (july 1992)

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis: Dentures can affect breath test results if the wearer has not rinsed or brushed; but they need not be removed for fear that the adhesive will cause a high false positive.

ARTICLE

A total of 24 alcohol-free, denture-wearing subjects were tested for mouth-alcohol retention times with an Intoxilyzer 5000. The subjects were given 30 mL doses of 80 proof brandy to swish in their mouths without swallowing for 2 min prior to expectorating the dose. Subjects were tested under three conditions: 1) with dentures removed, 2) with dentures held loosely in place without an adhesive, and 3) with dentures plus an adhesive. Beyond 20 min following expectoration, mouth alcohol made no significant contribution to the apparent breath alcohol concentration (BrAC), with trace (less than or equal to 0.01 g/210 L) readings found in only two of the subjects. Denture use, both with and without the concurrent use of adhesives does not significantly affect BrAC as long as a pretest alcohol deprivation period of 20 min is observed.

Abstract courtesy of www.pubmed.org - A service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

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Jones, Reflection on the GERD Defense, DWI Journal; Law and Science 3 (2005) and: Kechagias, Jonsson, Franzen, Andersson and Jones, Reliability of Breath-Alcohol Analysis in Individuals with Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease, 44 (4) J. Forensic Sci. 814, (Jul. 1999)

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis: The jury is still out on whether GERD presents a viable defense to breath testing, although this article indicates that it is highly improbable; since I suffer from GERD, I would offer that the result is highly individualistic, and the only proper way to test for such a theory is to have the subject duplicate the testing under controlled conditions, where blood and breath are measured regularly, and where the subject is told to blow like police instruct: as hard and long as possible, which serves to compress the diaphram.

ARTICLE:

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) is widespread in the population among all age groups and in both sexes. The reliability of breath alcohol analysis in subjects suffering from GERD is unknown. We investigated the relationship between breath-alcohol concentration (BrAC) and blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) in 5 male and 5 female subjects all suffering from severe gastroesophageal reflux disease and scheduled for antireflux surgery. Each subject served in two experiments in random order about 1-2 weeks apart. Both times they drank the same dose of ethanol (approximately 0.3 g/kg) as either beer, white wine, or vodka mixed with orange juice before venous blood and end-expired breath samples were obtained at 5-10 min intervals for 4 h. An attempt was made to provoke gastroesophageal reflux in one of the drinking experiments by applying an abdominal compression belt. Blood-ethanol concentration was determined by headspace gas chromatography and breath-ethanol was measured with an electrochemical instrument (Alcolmeter SD-400) or a quantitative infrared analyzer (Data-Master). During the absorption of alcohol, which occurred during the first 90 min after the start of drinking, BrAC (mg/210 L) tended to be the same or higher than venous BAC (mg/dL). In the post-peak phase, the BAC always exceeded BrAC. Four of the 10 subjects definitely experienced gastric reflux during the study although this did not result in widely deviant BrAC readings compared with BAC when sampling occurred at 5-min intervals. We conclude that the risk of alcohol erupting from the stomach into the mouth owing to gastric reflux and falsely increasing the result of an evidential breath-alcohol test is highly improbable.

Abstract courtesy of www.pubmed.org - A service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

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Trafford & Makin, Breath Alcohol Concentration May Not Always Reflect the Concentration of Alcohol in Blood, 18 Journal of Analytical Toxicology 225 (1994)

Dave's Plain Language Analysis / Synopsis:  37 YOA had BrAC twice the limit but blood under limit because dental work.As expected, anecdotal evidence has indicated for years that mouth alcohol contamination is dependent on many factors, including food particles caught in between teeth that can trap alcohol and then give that alcohol up to the outgoing respiration, resulting in a false high positive breath measurement.

A case is described of a 37-year-old man who was breath tested by the U.K. police following a traffic accident and was found to have a breath-alcohol concentration of 70 micrograms/100 mL--twice the U.K. legal limit. The defendant protested vigorously that he had not consumed sufficient alcohol to account for this excessive reading, and Widmark calculations, assuming his account of the alcohol consumed was accurate, suggested his contention was possibly correct. No evidence was obtained suggesting that the Lion Intoximeter used for the breath analysis was anything other than accurate. Alcohol loading tests were therefore carried out in the laboratory on two separate occasions, showing that breath-alcohol concentrations grossly in excess of the legal limit (140 micrograms/100 mL) were obtained when the amount of alcohol administered would have been expected to give a theoretical maximum of 35 micrograms/100 mL. A blood sample taken at the point when the breath-alcohol concentration was 70 micrograms/100 mL was shown to contain 54 mg of alcohol/100 mL of blood. Dental examination of the defendant showed that he had had extensive work carried out, including three bridges. A possible explanation, therefore, for these anomalous results is that the excessive breath-alcohol concentrations might be due to mouth alcohol retained in the bridges or periodontal spaces, although a careful fraud by the subject of this report cannot be ruled out.

Abstract courtesy of www.pubmed.org - A service of the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health

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