Understanding Alcohol Breathalysers

Certain levels of intoxication are judged either by the law or as generally accepted standards to be the limit for living a certain lifestyle or doing a certain job. For example most people are familiar with the rules on drinking and driving where in the UK we have a limit of 80milligrams per 100millilitres of blood to drive or operate machinery (which can also be referred to as 35 microgrammes of alcohol per 100 millilitres of breath). In most of Europe and the USA this level is 50mg per 100ml of blood.

Airline pilots operate under a zero limit tolerance and are advised not to drink for 24 hours before flying, and alcohol breathalysers can also be used to text inebriation levels of those under the legal age to buy alcohol, and also for health monitoring of those with addiction. There are a range of breathalyser products available to cover all these testing requirements.

Practical Breathalyser Use

In order to give the most accurate reading possible, it is advised that the user has not consumed alcohol or smoked for 20 minutes before taking a breathalyser test because these things can interfere with an accurate blood alcohol breath reading. It also takes 20 minutes for alcohol to pass into your blood stream once digested. Therefore these breath testers are mostly designed for checking that you are safe to drive after an alcoholic working lunch or the morning after the night before when you may feel fine but your blood alcohol reading my tell a different story.