What is a Breathalyzer?
A breathalyzer is a kind of alcohol analyzer that indicates blood alcohol concentration (BAC) by breath analysis. Alcohol breathalyzers are useful instruments for alerting and reducing possible drunk driving.
In order to understand this process, let's examine some basic details about alcohol in our bodies, starting with the original intake and continuing through its assimilation in our blood supply, to its emergence in the breath.
Once you ingest an alcoholic drink, the liquid travels swiftly from your mouth to your stomach and very quickly, into the small intestine. Although some alcohol might be absorbed into your blood through the mucous lining of the mouth and digestive system, most of it gets absorbed through the walls of the small intestine as soon as your stomach valve opens.
Alcohol, especially in high levels, is able to delay the opening of this valve. This explains why, sometimes, some people can rapidly consume a few alcoholic beverages but still display a minimal breath alcohol level for a short period afterwards.
It is within the upper section of your intestinal tract, the duodenum, that alcohol gets absorbed into your blood. The duodenum walls are permeable and contain numerous blood vessels for taking in nutrients from digested food.
Most of the food you eat, like proteins, fats and carbs, need enzymes for digestion to make the food molecules small enough to pass into your bloodstream. Since the molecules in a drink are in liquid form, they are already small and so require no time for digestion. This reveals why the effects of alcohol are felt so rapidly when it is ingested before eating anything.
Right after drinking an alcoholic beverage, your blood alcohol concentration rises. As soon as percent of alcohol in your bloodstream reaches .02 to .03%, you may start to feel the relaxing effects of alcohol. After the alcohol amount reaches .05 to .10% you will have lessened muscular coordination, slower reaction times, and impaired judgment.
It is against the law and hazardous to operate a car with these blood alcohol levels. The government mandated limit is now .08% in all states. Consequently if your BAC is at .08% or over and you drive, you could be arrested for driving under the influence, head to jail, forfeit your license, pay lots of fines, etc. Not a pretty picture.
The content of alcohol in exhaled lung air samples directly reflects the concentration of it in your blood. In order to avoid jail and prevent all the other expenses associated with drunk driving, you should be aware of the BAC limits. If you drink often, a personal breathalyzer might be a great tool to help you avoid trouble.
These days you’ll find lots of low-priced breathalyzers available to buy. These digital devices have high testing accuracy and reliability due to their advanced semiconductor sensors, which are quite responsive to alcohol samples.
Digital breath testers also have uniform reproducibility, meaning that you will get accurate results with subsequent tests. Most of these devices also have short response times, so your results are nearly instantaneous.
This kind of breathalyzer will show you how much alcohol it will take to raise your BAC to dangerous levels. There are numerous factors affecting alcohol impairment, so everybody's reaction to this drug will be different.
Personal breathalyzers can help you and your friends or relatives make better decisions about driving after drinking and they might even save your life.
Resources
Breathalyzer.net – distributes several different hand-held breathalyzers, including the highly regarded AlcoMate Digital hand-held unit for consumers, and the Lifeloc FC for professional use.