Any Breathalyzer experts in the house?

[PhotonWrangler]

Diabetic or on the Atkins diet? Smoke? Ketones/acetone from any source as well as ions from smoke particles (or even the doctor's office air cleaner) will be detected by the breathalyzer as alcohol.

I was just going to suggest the same thing. Sometimes a diabetic is inappropriately labelled as "drunk" when in fact the presence of ketones produces an odor on the breath and a reading on the meter. Sometimes this is accompanied by disoriented behavior due to blood sugar being way off, which only adds to the effect.

 

[gadget_lover]

Hey Topper, You should probably take a deep breath and try to mellow out. Yes, it seems insulting to be falsely accused. Yes, it's embarassing to be escorted to the doc. Yes, you were totally innocent.

BUT!


If you ran a business and thought someone might be drinking on the job, would you not want to protect them and yourself by confirming it? You would not want to wait till there was actual damage to someone or something. It's not like you were fired, disciplined, or otherwise punished. If you've been acting wierd, (dizzy, clumsy, silly, etc) you might want to have your own doctor check for possible medical causes.

You don't really want to blow off a job over something like this. Making decisions to take action like this is really hard for your boss. I know. I've been there. So show him some compasion. Let it slide. It would be the proper thing to do.

Daniel

 

[metalhed]

Topper -- I don't know if anybody else said this and I missed it, but your .006 reading is well over one hundred times less than the level it would take to charge you with drunk driving.

Regardless of whether or not the slight level detected in your system is a calibration error or a natural 'background' level of alcohol, the reading is insignificant in any legal sense.

There is no way you can be penalized or punished for such a reading. I would just ignore it and not worry about it.




Now just do me a favor, and don't take up boxing or football.

Gotta' protect that grey matter...you can't post without at least a little bit of it left...ummm...errr...I think. :laughing:

 

[wmpwi]

I don't have the energy to real the prior posts should someone else have mentioned it, but here's my extensive expertise. You are in a doctors office. There is alcohol in use all over the place including, but not limited to the technician's hands from a little earlier in the checkup. These things can be very sensitive and have been known to pick up on the the alcohol hand sanitizer that's so popular these days, your aftershave, or even some cotton ball in the trash next to you from the last guy that gave blood. I even found the individually wrapped eyeglasses wipes will do. The list goes on. To test this I once used the hand sanitizer before using one and it read off the scale. My bet is that one of the aforementioned sources or the calibration issue mentioned earlier are the problem. Freak not, you'll be fine.

 

[wmpwi]

BTW, this would hold true for most PBT's (portable breath test) as well as Breathalyzer type units.