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Breathing Paint Fumes = High Breath Test Results?

By Lawrence Taylor

In ?Why Breathalyzers Don?t Measure Alcohol?, I mentioned one of the many reliability problems breath machines have: they falsely report any of thousands of chemical compounds as ?alcohol?.  Scientific studies have clearly proven this defect, a problem referred to as non-specificity.  My post ?Driving Under the Influence of?Gasoline?? presented a practical example of one such compound. But is gasoline the only chemical product that has been proven to falsely register as alcohol on these machines? Far from it. See, for example, ?The Response of the Intoxilyzer 4011AS to a Number of Possible Interfering Substances?, 35(4) Journal of Forensic Sciences 797, where researchers found numerous common substances which were falsely reported by breathalyzers as alcohol ? including methyl ethyl ketone, which is used in lacquers, paint removers, cements, adhesives, celluloid and cleaning fluids...continue to full post

Full post as published by DUI Blog on February 28, 2008 (boomark / email).