Detecting breath odor from alcohol consumption.

This paper describes a study which investigated the accuracy of breath odour detection by police officers. The study was designed to examine the ability of highly-trained officers to detect odours from alcohol under optimum conditions. It was conducted indoors with subjects blowing their breath through a short tube directly facing the nostrils of officers whilst the subjects were behind screens. It was found that even in these optimum conditions only 78.5% of detections were correct. There was no ability to specify the blood alcohol content or the beverage consumed.