Think about going home from a dinner in Midtown tonight. You had one glass of wine several hours ago and knew you were not drunk. A minor traffic violation (like a taillight burned out or not keeping the lane) occurs and you are pulled over. The officer says he smells alcohol and requests you to take a roadside test, or a station test at the police station. You know you are under the legal limit, but to your shock and dismay, the machine shows a reading higher than the legal limit – 0.08. You are handcuffed, arrested and you are completely confused with all this.
In fact, this frightening situation occurs more often than drivers think and it isn’t because they are driving while drunk, its just the science behind the operation of these testing machines. The equipment that law enforcement has are high tech devices, but they are not infallible and perfect judges of truth. They are programmed to make certain assumptions regarding the human body and when a driver’s body chemistry falls outside of those “baseline” parameters it can be a really bad mistake that causes the driver to be falsely charged with a crime. This is because the equipment must be analyzed carefully to better understand how it occurs. Police departments statewide use a device called an Intoxilyzer.
This machine uses infrared spectroscopy to detect the concentration of alcohol vapor in a person’s breath, which it can then convert to an estimate of blood alcohol level. The problem with this process is that it’s searching for a particular form, or structure, of molecules, in this case, the form that contains the methyl group structure that’s present in ethanol – the alcohol found in alcoholic beverages. This molecule, however, is not the only one containing it or its close relatives that can fool the machine’s very sensitive internal chemical testing sensors. The machine assumes that anything that it sees in that particular infrared range is intoxicating ethanol from normal alcoholic drink beverages.
If you are breathing a different, legal compound, it may be confused with the intoxicating alcohol, and the machine could report a very high BAC for a person who is not intoxicated – and thus make them an arresting officer’s suspect. The current widespread popularity among adults seeking to improve their overall health and wellness is one of the most common causes of false positive breath readings in today’s market: Low Carbohydrate and Ketogenic Diets. If one follows a strict keto diet, they drastically cut down on their carbohydrate consumption, allowing their body to find other sources of energy to replace glucose, which is the energy source provided by carbohydrates in the body.
When the liver runs out of glucose from the carbohydrates, it starts to convert stored fat into molecules known as ketones that can be used for energy. This metabolic state is called ketosis and is very effective for weight reduction and treatment of some health conditions, but it makes a special and potentially hazardous circumstance when confronted with police breathalyzers. The most troublesome ketone oxidized by the human body during this fat burning process is isopropyl alcohol. This is scientifically an alcohol but is definitely not the ‘drinking’ ethanol in alcoholic drinks like beer, wine or liquor that causes impairment while operating a motor vehicle on a roadway.
Isopropyl alcohol cannot be used to provide energy, and is simply excreted as a waste product. Much of this excretion is via the lungs which results in loss when breathing out. The infrared sensors in the machine detect the isopropyl alcohol in the driver’s breath when he/she blows into the machine, while the driver is in a deep state of ketosis. The machine has a very similar molecular structure to ethanol and is very difficult to distinguish the two. The device detects the level of the harmless metabolic waste, classifies it as an alcoholic beverage and feeds a BAC reading that is completely bogus and totally wrong scientifically.
If a driver has had none of the alcohol, they could still get a positive result due to following a dietary plan. The biological phenomenon essentially ends up condemning the healthy choice of lifestyle when it comes to the narrow-minded and problematic testing of chemicals on roadsides and precincts. This metabolic trap can be associated with other diets as well as the keto diet. Health-conscious adults around the state have also embraced the intermittent fasting trend in recent years. People regularly experience periods of 16-24 hours of calorie restriction. Extended fasting puts the body in the same state of ketosis as a low carbohydrate diet, and results in the same isopropyl alcohol breath excretion test results.
Moreover, people with diabetes, especially those who have not been diagnosed or who do not know they have diabetes and are not managing their health, may suffer from a serious diabetic complication called diabetic ketoacidosis. In this state, the production of ketone gets going a lot and the odor of the breath will be so fruity or alcoholic that even a police officer can tell. Based on training, an officer will misinterpret this biological symptom as impairment. This results in an arrest and false positive reading on the machine because the amount of ketones taken from the breath sample is huge. Medical conditions other than diet can affect the outcomes of a breath test. Due to gastroesophageal reflux disease, complete mechanical failure of the breather is common with a mechanical environment of the device.
To accurately estimate the BAC, the machine needs to be fed a sample of air from the deep lung. The machine assumes that the air you exhale is a good sample of what is in your bloodstream at the precise moment that the police test you. A refluxing driver may have stomach contents suddenly enter the mouth just prior to the breath test. If the driver has consumed an amount of alcohol that was legally allowed earlier, the trace amount is forced into the mouth. This is why it’s important to find an Atlanta DUI Attorney or a DUI Lawyer that Atlanta citizens trust so that they can win false positive readings.
