Alcohol Abuse Advice

Different types of alcohol testing explained

Alcohol testing is commonly used by sports coaches and organisations, the police, and employers who wish to screen potential or existing employees.

There are a range of methods available allowing physicians to perform an alcohol test, including urine, saliva, blood, breath and hair tests; each of which have different pros and cons, and situations where they are more effective than other techniques, reports AlcoholTestInfo.com.

Urine testing is the more inexpensive method used, and can be used at home – although the most accurate results would come from lab verification. Benefits of this method include the reliability of the results and flexibility of the test, and the respect results gain in legal situations. However the tests are sometimes deemed as intrusive, and can only detect alcohol up to 4 or 5 days after it has been consumed.

Physicians are also able to use blood testing to detect alcohol, one of the most accurate ways to measure alcohol content. This is an expensive yet reliable method, however it is fairly intrusive, and can be altered by the presence of blood-thinning drugs, which many heart patients are required to take.

A relatively non-intrusive technique is saliva testing, which is fairly cheap to execute and can provide instant results… Results should be confirmed though using a blood or urine sample by a laboratory if there may be legal proceedings as a result of a positive. Saliva samples can be easily collected.

Breath testing estimates the concentration of alcohol in a person’s blood, and are commonly used for evidentiary purposes, however breathalyzers can provide false readings if there is any vomit or blood present in the mouth, which is always a potential situation when a person is intoxicated.

Lastly, hair testing detects ethyl glucuronide and fatty acid ethyl esters , metabolites converted by the body when alcohol enters the bloodstream. This provides an excellent way of detecting chronic alcoholic consumption dating back for many months , depending on the levels of the chemicals found. About.com says it is a fairly non-intrusive procedure, however it is a fairly expensive method, and will not work on people with hair shorter than one inch. If the person shaves their head, the method will not work, and physicians require a bundle of hair to undertake the test – it does not work on single hairs.

More Alcoholic Tests Articles