Alcohol in breath and blood: a selected ion flow tube mass spectrometric study

Abstract

In this paper we compare the amounts of ethanol in breath and in blood after ingestion of whisky using analysis by selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry (SIFT-MS). Blood ethanol concentrations were also obtained using standard hospital forensic procedures for blood alcohol analyses. We demonstrate the quantitative nature of SIFT-MS analysis by correlating the observed alcohol content of the headspace above 5-mL amounts of venous blood and aqueous solution to which known trace amounts of alcohol have been added. This procedure provides a Henry's Law coefficient for ethanol in aqueous solution at 298 +/- 3 K of 209 +/- 7 mol/kg*bar. We also demonstrate that measurement of the ethanol concentration in the alveolar portion of a single breath using the SIFT-MS technique gives an accurate measure of blood alcohol and could obviate the need for blood samples in forensic processing. The storage performance of breath samples in Mylar bags with a volume greater than 1 L has been shown to maintain the mixture integrity for ethanol but not for some other species.

Mass spectrometric investigations to obtain the first direct comparisons of endogenous breath and blood volatile organic compound concentrations in healthy volunteers

“…CBr (nmol/l), n = 5 CAB (mol/l), n = 6 CVB (mol/l), n = 6 CAB/CBr CBr (nmol/l), n = 5 CAB (nmol/l), n = 6 CVB (nmol/l), n = 6 CAB/CBr concentrations our results are in reasonable agreement [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28], especially for those studies involving healthy patients. For some of the studies there are some differences which need some explanation.…”

“…In contrast recent selected ion flow tube studies (SIFT) [23,27,28] all present breath acetone and isoprene concentrations lower than our values. Wilson et al [28] provide values for breath acetone and isoprene to be 100-200 ppb and 200-500 ppb, respectively.…”

Progress in SIFT‐MS: Breath analysis and other applications

“…This flow tube was used to investigate fundamental ion chemistry (e.g., Španěl & Smith, 1998e;Španěl, Van Doren, & Smith, 2002;Dryahina, Polášek, & Španěl, 2004), to quantify anesthetic gases in exhaled breath (Wang, Smith, & Španěl, 2002) and also to investigate the dependence of the diffusion losses of ions in helium on their geometrical size (Dryahina & Španěl, 2005 The next obvious step in SIFT-MS development was to design an instrument that could be transported to different locations to allow air and breath analysis on line and in real time obviating sample collection. This required a leap into the unknown with a departure from the massive SIFT instruments that have existed in several laboratories around the world for decades, some of which were beginning to be used for trace gas analysis (Kato et al, 2001;Wilson et al, 2001) following the precedence set in our laboratories.…”

Kinetics of ethanol decay in mouth‐ and nose‐exhaled breath measured on‐line by selected ion flow tube mass spectrometry following varying doses of alcohol

“…37,38 Using the TBW for each volunteer (see Table 1) the upper-limit systemic (body water/blood) level of ethanol can be calculated as (ethanol dose)/TBW, and this can be reflected in the upper-limit value of the exhaled breath level, R d , using the known blood/breath partition relation for ethanol given above. Thus, R d corresponds to a notional breath level of ethanol that would be observed if no metabolism took place.…”