Citation

Schoknecht G, Stock B. Proc. Int. Counc. Alcohol Drugs Traffic Safety Conf. 1995; 1995: 134-140.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1995, The author(s) and the Council, Publisher International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The technical requirements for future evidential breath testing in Germany have been published recently in a draft of the German standard DIN/VDE 0405. In addition to the OIML specifications several requirements had to be added to achieve legal and technical acceptance. The most important are: two consecutive breath tests for mouth alcohol detection; measurement of the endexpiratorial breath temperature to compensate for changes in breath alcohol concentration due to the subject's body temperature and breathing technique; a sex and age dependent minimum blowing volume; and verification of the calibration by including two independent measuring systems with mutual control. Up to now no available instruments fulfil these requirements. We present a detailed description of a breathtesting instrument comprising two independent analytical systems (infrared and electrochemical) and means for breath temperature measurement. Furthermore, results from field and laboratory tests are given. Our data show a very good correlation between blood and breath alcohol concentration and show that breath temperature measurement considerably improves the performance of an evidential breath tester.