Dry Ethanol Gas Testing of Personal Use Breathalyzers

Abstract

There are approximately 13,000 fatalities resulting from alcohol‐impaired accidents each year. The use of accurate personal breath alcohol analyzers (BAA) could help reduce this number. The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of 5 consumer models of semi‐conductor type breath alcohol analyzers. For this study, each instrument was tested 10 times at three concentrations (0.035%, 0.070% and 0.087%) of a dry gas ethanol standard (National Institute of Standards‐traceable) at both room and human breath temperature. An evidentiary BAA (Lifeloc FC20) was also used as an internal control for the reference standard. The results of the study showed that none of the 5 instruments were accurate at any of the three concentrations tested. The accuracy was not affected by the change in temperature. Therefore, we concluded that none of the 5 breath alcohol analyzers studied could accurately inform the user of their breath alcohol status. Since these products are advertised as accurate, the advertisement appears to be misleading. Given the lack of accuracy found in this study, these breath alcohol analyzers would most likely not reduce the fatalities from alcohol‐impaired accidents.