China News Service, Beijing, June 11 (Reporter Sun Zifa) The way to open your mouth to check for drunk driving is expected to be changed to wearing special earmuffs in the future.
Springer Nature’s open-access academic journal "Science Reports" recently published an engineering research paper saying that researchers have passed a proof-of-principle study showing that a new device worn on the ear can pass through the wearer’s skin Non-invasive detection of real-time changes in blood alcohol content.
The new device designed by the corresponding author of the paper, Kohji Mitsubayashi of Tokyo Medical and Dental University and his colleagues includes a modified commercial earmuff and an ethanol gas sensor. The earmuff is responsible for collecting the release of the wearer’s ear skin. Gas, the sensor will emit light when it detects ethanol gas, and the light intensity can be used to calculate the ethanol concentration.
They first allowed three male volunteers to drink at a dose of 0.4g/kg of alcohol, and then used their device to continuously monitor the ethanol gas released from the ears of the three volunteers for 140 minutes.
The researchers also used another ethanol gas sensor and a device to detect the concentration of ethanol in the volunteers' breath at regular intervals. The reagents contained in the device change color when exposed to ethanol.
The authors of the paper found that the concentration of ethanol released by the ears and exhalation of all volunteers changed very similarly over time.
Previous studies have shown that there is a correlation between breath and the concentration of alcohol in the blood, which also indicates that the device may replace the alcohol detector to estimate the blood alcohol content.
According to the authors of the paper, the average maximum ethanol concentration released by ears is 148 parts per billion, which is twice the previously reported concentration of hand skin release.
Because there is no need to insert a blow tube into the mouth, the previous device used the hand to detect blood alcohol content as a non-invasive alternative to breath detection.
The results of the study indicate that the ear may be a more suitable site for this type of test.
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