California Legal Team, DUI Lawyers: (949) 719-2649
Breathalyzers are used by U.S. law enforcement agencies and the results obtained by these machines are often admitted as valid evidence of Blood Alcohol Concentration (BAC) in U.S. Courts, from a breath sample. The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approves these instruments for use despite the fact that there validity has been clearly proven unreliable in many scientific studies.
A major flaw with breathalyzers is that they do not measure blood for alcohol content. They measure breath. In doing so, they take a 1 milliliter sample of air out of the up to 6 liters of air possibly expelled which is a mere 0.0002%.
Breathalyzers also assume that every single person in the world absorbs, metabolizes, distributes and eliminates alcohol in the manner and rate and has exactly the same proportion of alcohol in their breath and blood at all times. This is particularly ridiculous being that the pharmacokinetics of alcohol have been proven to vary drastically amongst individuals. Breathalyzers also fail to account for the complex exchange of gasses that occurs in the airways and bronchial tracts in which expelled air interacts with alcohol in the mucous membranes of the airways which can drastically affect accuracy.
Breathalyzers assume that every single individual taking the test is breathing normally and perfectly and does not have their breathing patterns affected by being nervous about being taken to jail for the first time or having a lung or pulmonary ailment such as asthma, COPD, emphysema or any other lung disease.
Okorie Okorocha*
California Legal Team
*Okorie Okorocha has degrees in Biology and Law.
