Oklahoma's Oldest DUI Defense Firm

Attorneys Stephen G. Fabian Jr. and Brian P. Young

What Can Affect A Breath Test?

There are many things that can affect a test of breath to determine alcohol concentration. There are approximately 102 compounds that can exist naturally in the human body that can look like ethyl alcohol to a breath testing machine. The hard part is for this machine to differentiate between real ethyl alcohol and these other compounds. While the current equipment purportedly has safeguards built into the equipment to protect against improper analysis, the equipment is never tested to determine if the safeguards are working. The Intoxilyzer 5000D has filters that are supposed to filter out the nonalcoholic compounds. Unfortunately, Oklahoma uses a filter wheel with only three filters for this purpose even though the manufacturer has designed a better filter wheel containing five filters instead of three. The manufacturer feels this makes the machine more dependable in accurately analyzing your breath, ensuring the result is actually ethyl alcohol and not some other compound.