ABSTRACT
The first scientific investigations into the fate of alcohol in the human body can be traced back to the nineteenth century as reported in a substantive paper from 1874. Sir Edward Mellanby a physician and pharmacologist from England investigated the disposition and fate of ethanol in human and animal experiments. When ethanol was administration to dogs by stomach tube, ethanol was rapidly absorbed from the gut and peak blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) was reached between 10–60 minutes post-dosing. Use of a mass spectrometric detector furnishes a higher analytical selectivity by identifying prominent mass fragments of ethanol in addition to retention times of the components. Five basic analytical principles have been utilized for determination of ethanol; wet-chemistry oxidation, enzymatic oxidation, electrochemical oxidation, gas-liquid chromatography, and infrared spectrometry. In 1980s when European nations began to consider using evidential breath-alcohol instruments for legal purposes, statutory breath alcohol concentration limits were derived from existing BAC limits by dividing by a population average blood/breath ratio of alcohol.
