Citation

Jones AW. Proc. Int. Counc. Alcohol Drugs Traffic Safety Conf. 2000; 2000: -p..

Copyright

(Copyright © 2000, The author(s) and the Council, Publisher International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

Exactly 50 years ago at the T-1950 conference in Stockholm, a new principle was introduced for measuring alcohol in biological specimens. This involved the oxidation of ethanol with an enzyme called alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which had been extracted and purified from horse liver. The ADH method was more sensitive and selective for measuring ethanol than the wet-chemistry oxidation procedures used during the first half of the century. Breath tests for alcohol were given a boost when Borkenstein developed the Breathalyzer in 1954. Breath testing for alcohol influence became widely used for traffic law enforcement purposes in USA, Canada, and Australia. In European countries blood and urine were the preferred specimens for forensic alcohol analysis and by the early 1960s the method of gas chromatography (GC) appeared including the headspace sampling technique, which was perfect for analyzing volatile substances in body fluids. Interest in Europe shifted towards evidential breath-alcohol testing in the 1980s, which coincided with the introduction of new analytical technology for sampling and analysis of breath, such as compact infrared (IR) spectrometers controlled by microprocessors. In the 1970s, electrochemical oxidation of alcohol with fuel cell devices became popular and these were incorporated into hand-held instruments suitable for roadside screening of motorists. Recent improvements in this kind of technology have meant that fuel cells are being used for evidential breath-alcohol testing. Whether breath-alcohol devices utilizing gas chromatography and mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or Fourier transform infrared spectrometry (FTIR) will emerge to provide the ultimate way of identifying ethanol in blood and breath samples for forensic purposes remains to be seen. One goal for the new millennium, at least in some countries, seems to be the use of evidential breath-alcohol testing at the roadside. This saves much time and resources for the police and also reduces the number of false-positive roadside alcohol screening tests.