Breathalyzers

A breathalyzer (or breathalyser) is a device for estimating blood alcohol content (BAC) from a breath sample. more...

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"Breathalyzer" is the brand name of a series of models made by one manufacturer of these instruments (originally Smith and Wesson, later it was sold to National Draeger), but has become a genericized trademark for all such instruments. Intoxilyzer, Intoximeter, AlcoMate, AlcoScan, AlcoHAWK, Alcotest, Alcosensor, Alcolizer, Datamaster and BreathKey are the other most common brand names in use today. The U.S. Government's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration maintains a "Conforming Products List" of breath alcohol devices approved for evidentiary use , as well as for preliminary screening use . In Canada, a preliminary non-evidentiary screening device can be approved by Parliament as an approved screening device and an evidentiary breath instrument can be similarly designated as an approved instrument.

Origins

Though technologies for detecting alcohol vary, it's widely accepted that Dr. Robert Borkenstein (1912–2002), a captain with the Indiana State Police and later a professor of Indiana University at Bloomington, is regarded as the first to create a device that measures a subject's blood alcohol level based on a breath sample. In 1954, Borkenstein invented his breathalyzer, which used chemical oxidation and photometry to determine alcohol concentration. Subsequent breathalyzers have converted primarily to infrared spectroscopy. The invention of the breathalyzer provided law enforcement with a non-invasive test providing immediate results to determine an individual's BAC at the time of testing. It does not, however, determine an individual's level of intoxication, as this varies by a subject's individual alcohol tolerance. Also, the BAC test result itself can vary between individuals consuming identical amounts of alcohol due to race, gender, weight, genetic pre-disposition, metabolic rate, etc.

Law enforcement

Breath analyzers do not directly measure blood alcohol content or concentration, which requires the analysis of a blood sample. Instead, they estimate BAC indirectly by measuring the amount of alcohol in one's breath. Two technologies are most prevalent. Evidentiary machines, used by police forces, generally utilize infrared spectrophotometer technology. Hand-held field testing devices, less accurate but becoming increasingly popular with law enforcement, are based on electrochemical fuel cell analysis; used by officers in the field as a form of "field sobriety test", they are commonly called PBT (preliminary breath test) or PAS (preliminary alcohol screening).

Read more at Wikipedia.org