DUI Breath Test Results Can be Influenced by Diet
Recently, I had a case with a person on a low carb diet that was arrested for Driving Under the Influence(DUI). The breath test was high for the amount of alcohol she consumed and I remembered the issue of low carb diets and elevated breath tests results. Low carb diets such as the South Beach diet and Atkins diet can increase the acetone in the body. Why is that important?
The breath test machine may confuse the acetone with alcohol. Therefore, it will give a higher reading on the breath alcohol test. In Attorney Lawrence Taylor's blog post, Dieting Can Cause High Breathalyzer Results, he wrote about the effects of dieting and increased breath alcohol levels:
Fasting or radical dieting, such as with the Atkins diet, can also cause significantly elevated acetone. Studies have concluded that fasting, for example, can increase acetone in the body sufficient to obtain breathalyzer readings of .06% (this is cumulative — that is, the .06% will be added by the machine to any levels actually caused by alcohol or other compounds, so that a true breath alcohol of .03%, for example, would be reported by the machine as .09%).
The importance of this fact is, diet and other factors can influence breath alcohol testing levels. Do breath test machines detect this? I don't know. The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation doesn't even have an owner's manual for the breath test machines that the citizens of the State of Tennessee have paid for.
This post is very illustrative of the systemic problems with evidentiary breath testing. As we stumble into the second full decade of the 21st century, it should and must be abandoned as a means of conviction. To convict anyone on an indirect measure of wavelengths not specific to ETOH at the exclusion of all others on the spectra with less than perfect residual mouth alcohol detector is a crime against science and a crime agains the truth.
Keep posting. I'll keep reading.
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-Justin J. McShane, Esquire-Harrisburg DUI Lawyer