Mouth Refresher Raise Alcohol Proof

Lots of people drive after taking alcohol.

They usually wash their mouths with mouth refresher after taking chocolate or sobering pill in order to escape crackdown. But if they know the principle of the Breathalyzer, they would know that it doesn’t help at all.

The Breathalyzer is a kind of `alcohol gas sensor`.

The Breathalyzer has a platinum electrode in it. When a molecule of alcohol sticks to the positive pole of the platinum electrode, alcohol gives an electron to the electrode making electric current passing. The more molecules of alcohol the breath has, the stronger intensity of electric current passes. The concentration of alcohol in the blood can be calculated with the intensity of this electric current.

In fact, the Breathalyzer gauges the concentration of alcohol in the breath. Then, what makes it called concentration of alcohol in the blood, though it doesn’t draw blood? The blood takes oxygen in and sends carbon dioxide out by passing through lungs. Alcohol gas also runs out to lungs from blood. The measuring instrument calculates the concentration of alcohol in the blood by measuring alcohol gas in the breath.

When you wash your mouth with mouth refresher after drinking, you are more likely to be pinched by a cop. That’s because mouth refresher contains 20 to 30 percent of transformed alcohol, whose density is higher than Korean popular liquor Soju’s. When you blow at the Breathalyzer after washing with mouth refresher, lethal dose of alcohol might be measured.

Even though you drown the smell with chocolate, blowing Breathalyzer for 4 or 5 seconds allows the instrument to measure the alcohol in the lungs. Old breathalyzer used 7 or 8 years ago was unable to measure alcohol from the smell of chocolate, but the machine currently used are never disturbed by chocolate at all.

dream@donga.com