Diabetes Causing People To Fail Breath Tests in Florida?

Could you fail the breathalyzer test even if you have had nothing to drink?  If you are a type I or II diabetic, the answer, according to a Jamaican policy study, is yes.  DUI lawyers, beware.

The Jamaican Study

An independant health consultant at the Jamiacan Department of Parclinical Sciences recently published a stud conlcuding that some diabetic citizens were falsely convicted of DUI when they were not impaired by alcohol.  The study concluded that diabetics whose insulin levels had dropped were likely to exhibit wobbliness and other signals that Jamiacan police confused with impairment.  Then, when taken back to the Station and given a breath test, the defendants often failed the test even when they were not impaiured by alchohol.  Eight of the studies diabetic participants who “failed the breath test” immediately had there blood tested for alchohol.  As previousy discussed in this DUI blog blood testing is the most accurate way to determine blood alcohol levels, not breath tests..  Of those Eight, Four of the participants, or 50 percent, passed the blood test.  That is an astronomically high failure rate..

It’s the Insulin, Stupid

The problem with diabetics and breath test machines has to deal with insulin.  Diabetics have insulin deficiencies, requiring supplementation to mantain proper glucose levels in the diabetic.  If the insulin level drops enough, then the body starts goig into ketosis, and ketones are released into the body.  One particular keytone is a molecule called acetone.  Acetone is present in all people to a small extent, but can be present in concrentations that a hundreds of times higher than a normal person in a diabetic who needs insulin.

 

Breath Test Machine Can’t Tell the Difference Between Ketones and Ethanol

Now, breath test machines measure molecules in the breath.  The machine is looking for ethanol molecules.  How does the machine recognize molecules?  It has to do with passing light through the molecule and measuring the wavelength of light that results.  Ethanol it turns out, has a wavelength of 3.4 microns.  So, the machine, in part, looks for the amount of these microns and then calculates a breath test number.

But there are hundreds of chemicals in the human body that have the same wavelength.  So the problem is that the machine is capable of mixing up other molecules with ethanol, or having false positives.  One such molecule is acetone.

So, in the diabetics who need insulin, the acetone seems to be misinterpreted by the machine as ethanol.  Then, the machine will spit out a number that is false and too high.  As a result, you have false readings, and, in the case of the Jamacain study, false convictions.

If you are a diabetic and you failed a breath machine after a DUI arrest, it would be wise to consult with a DUI Lawyer to discuss if your breath results are wrong. Clicl here read the full Jamaican breath test DUI study.

Under category: Uncategorized | September 2nd, 2011 | 1 Comment »