NCJ Number
188640
Journal
Japanese Journal of Legal Medicine Volume: 54 Issue: 2 Dated: August 2000 Pages: 233-240
Date Published
August 2000
Length
8 pages
Annotation
This article reviews the application of the Quantitative Ethanol Detector and Alco-Screen test kits in the measurement of ethanol in forensic samples.
Abstract
This article investigated the applicability of the Quantitative Ethanol Detector (Q.E.D.) and Alco-Screen test kits in the screening of ethanol concentrations in forensic samples, such as hemolyzed/decomposed blood, urine, and vitreous humor. Because both kits were based on enzymatic color reactions, direct application of the kits to hemoglobin-rich samples gave unsatisfactory results. This problem was overcome by the deproteinization of blood with trichloroacetic acid followed by membrane filtration. This procedure was also effective in the pretreatment of urine and vitreous humor samples suppressing excessive color development in the Alco-Screen test. The ethanol concentrations in whole blood, urine, and vitreous humor samples determined by the Q.E.D. kit correlated well with those determined by gas chromatography. Because of its high specificity and sensitivity to ethanol, Q.E.D. seemed to be highly reliable for quantitative estimation of ethanol concentrations in forensic samples. Alco-Screen also had high sensitivity and the specificity to ethanol was relatively low. The color reaction was also observed in the presence of acetone, n-propanol, toluene, methanol, ethylene glycol, methamphetamine, diazepam and dichrovos. Therefore, if using Alco-Screen to analyze forensic samples, it is necessary to confirm the positive results using other analytical methods. Graphs and tables