Taimoor Rana is seasoned criminal defense attorney specializing in DUI related cases. He shares his expert legal opinion here « GERD, Acid Reflux and False Breathalyzer Results
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- Steve is currently facing criminal charges for driving under the influence of alcohol. Although he was not under the influence of alcohol. It is just that he had one drink after work and then he was stopped at a DUI sobriety checkpoint on the way to home. The officer who has stopped him smelled the alcohol on his breath and asked Steve to step out of his car so that he may take some field sobriety tests. He did fairly well on the tests but, to make it more sure that he was not driving under influence, the officer asked him to breathe into the breath machine that had been set up by them at the checkpoint.
The results show .09%. Steve was then immediately arrested for DUI, handcuffed and they had taken him to jail; his license was immediately confiscated by the police officers and they have given him a notice of automatic suspension. When finally he was released after six hours, they gave him a notice to appear in court for arraignment on drunk driving charges.
What had happened?
How could James have only consumed one beer but registered .09% on the machine which is at least four times higher than what it would be expected?
Well, we should start with, breath machines that are commonly known as “Breathalyzers”, although there are many competing makes and models of these machines. These breath machines are notoriously inaccurate and unreliable. It has always been a problem that they are calibrated, maintained, repair and use by inexperienced or poorly trained officers. And there are having inherent design defects, such as they are “non-specific” for alcohol, what it means is that, they don’t actually measure alcohol; due to the nature of infrared analysis, thousands of other compounds are reported by them as “alcohol”. Another recurring problem in them is “mouth alcohol”.
What is Mouth Alcohol? how could this have caused Steve’s false reading?
The alcohol on the breath is measured by the machine, and an internal computer in that machine then multiplies the reading 2100 times to get a reading of alcohol in the blood. This is done because the amount of alcohol that is present in the blood is greatly reduced as it crosses from the blood into the alveolar sacs of the lungs and into the breath; the average person has 2100 times more alcohol in his blood than in his breath but this varies widely among individuals, however, and that is another inherent defect in the machines.
But what if the alcohol in the breath sample did not came from the lungs? It might have came from Steve’s mouth or throat?
Then this means that it will not have been processed through the body, into the blood and finally out through the lungs and this had not been reduced 2100 times. But the machine, as it is a machine,and it is programmed in such a way that it will always multiply it 2100 times. Result: This will result into false high reading and Steve is facing DUI charges.
So what was alcohol doing in Steve’s mouth or throat?
Well, it is the fact that for about 15 minutes alcohol will usually stay in the tissue of the oral cavity or esophagus until that it is finally diluted and flushed down into the stomach by saliva. So if Steve had “one for the road” just before that he was being tested, it had created a problem. Or may be the alcohol could have become trapped in dentures or gum cavities and it had lasted much longer than 15 minutes. Steve may have burped or belched within 15 minutes before that he had taken the test, sending up alcohol from the beer in his stomach into his mouth and esophagus. But what actually happened with Steve was that he is suffering from a very common condition: GERD, or “gastro esophageal reflux disease”. By this disease “acid reflux” is caused that is often experienced as heartburn.
Commonly “hiatal hernia” cause the Acid reflux that cause damage to the pyloric valve that separates the stomach from the esophagus. When the valve cannot close completely, then the liquids and gasses from the stomach can rise up into the throat and oral cavity of a person suffering from this disease, and it will remain there until once again flushed back down. Since stress can also cause a bout of acid reflux, so it is usual to find that people stopped by police officers for suspicion of DUI and that are subjected to field sobriety tests experience the condition.
Steve is now ordered to breathe into the machine’s mouthpiece. With alcohol from his stomach that is now rising into and permeating his mouth and throat, it is then mixed with the breath that passes from the lungs through the throat and mouth and into the machine. Since this is the alcohol that is being multiplied by the machine 2100 times, only a tiny, invisible amount of absorbed alcohol can cause a disproportionately high reading. In Steve’s case, an “innocent” reading of perhaps .02% had become a “guilty” of .09%. And Steve lost his driver’s license and now he has to try to prove his innocence in court.
Prove his innocence? Aren’t we presumed innocent in America?
Here again we are having the notorious “DUI exception to the Constitution”. Strangely, Steve is not presumed to be innocent as it is being thought by all of us: It is presumed by almost all state laws that a person is under the influence of alcohol if the machine’s reading is .08% or higher.
Yes, we are living in such a modern world but we are having a system where citizens are convicted by a machine, just a very fallible machine.
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2 commentsto “GERD, Acid Reflux and False Breathalyzer Results”
I have worked for the last 3.5 years for a company that installs interlock devices. I have installed, calibrated, and seen all of the reports sent to MVA. I have seen clients fail Ignition Interlock systems by eating a Banana, drinking Star Bucks coffee, taking their inhaler for Asthma. These devices will show a multitude of everyday things as alcohol and report failures. A failure is recorded if a reading of 0.025 is recorded and this is way under 0.08. These failures can and do cause people to lose their driving privilege.