The Lion Alcolmeter S-D2 is a multipurpose hand-held device, originally designed for a roadside breath screening test. Its easy-to-read digital display and highly reproducible breath sampling system have created many applications to alcohol research and medicine. This paper presents an evaluation of the Alcolmeter's precision and accuracy in experiments in vitro and in vivo. The in vitro experiments used air-alcohol mixtures, generated by a wet-bath simulator, using standards of known strength. The operator blew through the simulator to produce an equilibrated breath sample at 34 degrees C. Ten male volunteers took part in the in vivo experiments, each drinking a dose of ethanol equivalent to 0.80g ethanol per kg body weight in 30min. The in vitro experiments showed that at high concentrations of alcohol in the breath, the Alcolmeter response tended to decrease slightly, as the number of tests made at short (5min) intervals increased. Accuracy and precision in vitro were, as expected, better than in tests with human subjects. However, the accuracy and precision of the Lion Alcolmeter S-D2 were exceptionally good for a hand-held instrument with manual sampling procedure; its calibration was remarkably stable.
Samenvatting